


TTOBB Data Collection

by abundantlyqueer, boxoftheskyking, neenya, Pati79, suchanadorer



Series: Two Two One Bravo Baker Universe [17]
Category: Sherlock (TV), two two one bravo baker - Fandom
Genre: George Leonard, Other, Sally Donovan - Freeform, Sherrinford Hawksby-Holmes - Freeform, Siger Hawksby-Holmes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-20
Updated: 2012-07-22
Packaged: 2017-10-26 08:44:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abundantlyqueer/pseuds/abundantlyqueer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking, https://archiveofourown.org/users/neenya/pseuds/neenya, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pati79/pseuds/Pati79, https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchanadorer/pseuds/suchanadorer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a compilation of facts, comments and fanart about the Bravo Baker Team from Abundantlyqueer's Two Two One Bravo Baker, a Sherlock fanfiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. George Blackwood

  


Described in _7 over 7 Royal Marines agree_ as :

... a couple of inches shorter than Sherlock, but his frame is carrying a clean sixty pounds more, all of it thoroughly tempered muscle. His brown hair is cropped short, though there’s enough irrepressible wave to roughen the surface. His eyes are a pale, nondescript brown densely speckled with motes of vivid amber. There’s a unexpected delicacy to his features – the sharp arch of his eyebrows, the fine line of his nose, and the almost bowless curve of his top lip. He’s tanned deep gold across the nape of his neck and on his forearms; elsewhere his skin is creamy pale, contrasting starkly with the tattooed black bands curling from halfway up his left forearm, over his biceps, and up under the hem of his tee shirt sleeve.

He's 34 years old at the time of TTOBB.

Tatoo: Tribal sleeve that goes from his left shoulder down to the middle of his forearm.

Sagittarius, first house and jupiter in leo, venus in sagittarius.

Author's headcasting for Blackwood is [Lewis Collins circa 1979](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNAu8yGoU-s&feature=related) (the one with the shorter hair)

Blackwood is from Chelmsford – identifies as straight, for what it’s worth. Has had three ‘tour boyfriends’ but never looks at men otherwise. If there was a woman to be had on a tour, he would move heaven and earth to get some of that.

His family have been providing a steady stream of Commandos and Special Boat Service ratings since WWII. Chelle and Abbie are from naval families too, and Kathy’s family is RAF.

Two words come to mind when you see Blackwood drop his clothes: REAL ESTATE. He’s fucking huge, the guys give him shit all the time “you look like a fucking yank, man, what’s that all about?” at some point he started snipping a little slit in the hems of his tee shirt sleeves so they wouldn’t cut into his arms.

The blackwood in AQ's head rarely tops with another guy, which is hilarious when you consider his general persona/deportment/the significance often given to that. "Blackwood’s arse: take a ticket, there’s a line."

  
Blackwood’s first tour boyfriend was in Sierra Leone. That tour was really, really rough and the living conditions were atrocious. Blackwood became really good friends and really close with the other corporal in his fire-team. Neither of them had been involved in anything beyond a circle-jerk with other guys, but after a stunningly tough week they got simultaneously pissed and stoned, and the other guy confessed he liked watching porn of guys together, so they crawled into Blackwood’s sleeping bag and honestly he’s not sure what if anything happened that night, but they gradually figured a few things out in the ensuing weeks and months. It didn’t feel like a big decision or anything – Blackwood considers himself straight, but so do the vast majority of the guys who indulge in sex with other men while on combat tours. Blackwood – as we’ve seen – fucking loves sex with men, but he’s (in a way) like Henn in that he can’t imagine a relationship with a man that isn’t predicated on the army. He would probably describe his tour relationships as driven by necessity, but really it’s more like some people only smoke when they drink – to Blackwood, sex with men is something he only feels inclined to do when on a combat tour. The adrenaline and the camaraderie and the lack of women all sort of work together.

John and Blackwood had a thing that lasted almost a year, until John applied for a commission - the imminent difference in rank was a deal breaker for them both. It was all pretty low-key and laid back.

None of this undignified three guys in a sleeping bag with Henn hooting like a fucking nutcase that Blackwood’s involved in now. John’s like “Seriously? You’re fucking one of the privates? You’re the section Number Two and you’re fucking the second youngest private? That is just charming, George.” and Blackwood’s just like “I know, I said no but he just kept going anyway.” To which John responds with a barely aborted slap on the head.

Blackwood/Henn: Henn gets to Sangin, finds his tent, drops his bag, gets one look at Blackwood and is like ‘Hoooo yeah, I’ll have one of those.’ Blackwood managed to fend him off for about three days and then Henn just swarmed all over him, turned up in the common area in nothing but his tags pretending he’d lost his laptop and then sat down opposite Blackwood and started asking him all about his previous tours and then … and then Blackwood’s not entirely sure how Henn ended up in his lap let alone how he ended up telling Henn that Henn could fuck him and then they retired to Blackwood’s tent and the next day John was just like “WHAT. THE FUCK”.

Blackwood and Mcmath have never been together except with Henn. The general distribution is, if it’s Henn/Blackwood, Henn tops (though blackwood’s super bossy about it). If it’s all three of them (Blackwood/Henn/Mcmath), Blackwood takes it from both of them. McMath has a little crush on Blackwood who is after all a hell of a specimen of commando. But Blackwood would probably feel the age gap was too big, and McMath would probably feel he’d rather someone who wasn’t in such denial re being straight and shagging guys. Mcmath is comfortably bi, and he would feel a bit weird being with some guy who claims ‘it doesn’t count because it’s a war’.

 

  
**Blackwood at home:**   


He comes home, intending to take the leave and then cash out, by the end of leave he’s being sued for divorce so he signs for another two years and off they go again.

Blackwood has never told any of his wives (about having sex with men), and honestly if they asked directly, he’d (probably) panic and lie like a rug. They may suspect - for one thing, the guys all joke about it in a very ‘haha everyone does but i don’t haha’ way all the fucking time. There’s a ridiculous amount of homoerotic horseplay among the guys, and given some of blackwood’s …. proclivities in bed, certainly anyone as astute and irreverent as Chelle has worked it out.

 

Blackwood's ex(es): 

Kathy - 2 daughters, one 12 at the time of ttobb and one 10, that marriage lasted 4 years.  
Chelle - 2 daughters one 7 at the time of ttobb and one 5, that marriage lasted 2 years - he second daughter was conceived after they’d divorced but before he’d met Abbie.  
Abbie - 1 daughter who’s 3 at the time of ttobb, and that marriage lasted 2 years - they’ve been divorced for about a year and a half at the time of ttobb, and in the indelible and JWA universes, he and abbie are trying for another baby after he gets home.

Blackwood’s exes are - like sally, she’s totally his type - very focused, realistic, practical women who don’t tolerate a lot of drama.

None of blackwood’s exes are seeing anyone else seriously right now. Possibly because putative boyfriends tend to get a bit put out by a five foot ten in every direction Royal Marine coming to stay for six weeks and fixing the gutters and painting the bathroom and repouring the concrete outside the kitchen door. So that explains their side of it. And kind of Blackwood’s too - he’s not involved with anyone else (until Sally), and given the option of sleeping on the couch or coming to bed with a perfectly attractive woman he still has warm fuzzies for … come on, why wouldn’t he?

As Chelle says to Sally at one point, the key to making the whole situation work is realizing that “there’s enough of him to go round, pet, in fact there’s more than enough.” also, when any of Blackwood’s exes refer to ‘his real wife’, she means Elizabeth II.

Abbie really really wants another baby (she has a three year old daughter by blackwood already) and she doesn’t want to wait much longer - she’d really like her children to be reasonably close in age. She’s not at all thrilled by the idea of trying to find a boyfriend in a hurry just so she can get pregnant - she’s doing very nicely with her current arrangement, thanks. She’s considered the notion of AI, but Blackwood’s right there, and he is a great father and frankly the best ex-husband you could wish for (a damn sight better than he was as a husband) and you’ve got to admit he fathers beautiful kids and he’s fertile like you wouldn’t believe. Given the choice among some guy she barely knew, a Turkey baster, or Blackwood, Abbie made the not surprising choice to go with Blackwood.

Chelle made the same choice - her second daughter was conceived after she had divorced blackwood but before he met Abbie. 

Chelle gets delegated to tell people what’s what on behalf of the entire harem. She and Sally actually get on really well because they’re both pretty impatient with obfuscation and ambiguity.

Kathy is much more reticent by nature, and Abbie sort of feels her position as the most junior ex missus Blackwood - Chelle doesn’t give a fuck and doesn’t care who knows it. She’s quite protective of Blackwood and fiercely protective of the whole unit of the harem and their children. God help any woman who thinks she’s going to detach Blackwood from his previous families. Of course, Sally (Donovan) is more than fine with the whole situation - she does want Blackwood to be monogamous, but a one quarter share of him otherwise is plenty for her purposes.

 

**"Harem"** is certainly a term they use to describe themselves - well, Chelle and Abbie would, Kathy would probably think ‘brothel’, but she’d never say it aloud. They’re clearly using it ironically - each of those women is very deliberately choosing the continuing relationship with Blackwood for her own benefit.

The situation is more like a male lion in a pride - he’s tolerated for a certain length of time, and while he’s there he’s quite dominant over the females and is pretty much waited on paw and paw, but in the end they’re not willing to put up with his shit indefinitely and they turf him out again when he’s served his purpose. But it’s all fine because that particular lion starts clawing the walls after a bit and is eager to go scampering off with the other males again.

None of those women are particularly exercised about issues of cultural sensitivity. They’re kind and generous and have plenty of unexamined prejudices, like most people.

****  
Ficlets:   


Blackwood/McMath/Henn:

“Ah God, Jesus, that’s it, I’m done,” Henn husks. “Everybody the fuck off.”  
McMath rolls aside right away, but Blackwood stretches out along the length of Henn’s body one more time and licks a wet stripe from his chin to his temple.  
“I said stop,” Henn sputters, squirming.  
“Sorry,” Blackwood grins, and pulls back as far as his knees.  
He extends a hand, which Henn grasps, and pulls the other man into a sit. Blackwood is still grinning, and Henn’s momentary annoyance turns to a smile as Blackwood leans in on his hands and knees and brushes a brief kiss onto the tape across the bridge of Henn’s nose.  
“You’re still the prettiest girl in Bravo Baker,” Blackwood says fondly.  
Henn snorts, and socks him a solid punch in the right biceps. Blackwood drops to his shoulder, howling, and rolls onto his back. Henn crawls over him and off the platform, looking around for his clothes while McMath stretches and scratches and squints out through the tent flap at Hinde throwing rocks into the river.  


Blackwood/Chelle:

Chelle opens the front door to find Blackwood standing on the step, one hand braced high on the door frame, his head dipped so that all she sees is the smooth wool round of his green beret, and his kit bag at his feet. He lifts his head, mouth serious but eyes flashing.  
“Hello, love,” he says. “Your mum home, is she?”  
Chelle sucks her cheeks in, trying to quash her smile, as she looks him over from scuffed desert boots, up heavy camouflage pants and an expanse of tee shirt to his sun-speckled face.  
“Didn’t manage to get yourself killed this time either, then?” she asks archly.  
“Not for want of trying,” he says with a little jerk of his head.  
“I can believe it,” Chelle says. “Come on, in you come.”  
She steps back, and he swings his kit-bag up onto his shoulder and follows her into the narrow hallway. He sets his kit-bag down, peels his beret off and pushes it under his epaulette. His eyes sweep the framed photographs on the side of the stairs, his mouth curling as he looks at the ones added since his last visit – the girls in red velvet and white angora in front of the Christmas tree, and in seersucker sundresses with ice cream cones in front of a carousel.  
“Everybody all right, then?” he asks, looking at her with eyes that are simultaneously vivid and dark.  
“Yeah, fine,” Chelle says, pushing a swatch of dark blond hair behind her ear.  
“They here?” he asks, glancing up the stairs.  
Chelle shakes her head, and her hair falls around her face again.  
“They’ve got swimming,” she says. “They’ll be back at five.”  
“Did they know I was coming?” he asks, his expression suddenly serious and almost uncertain.  
Chelle smiles and shakes her more vigorously.  
“Course not, they wouldn’t go to swimming if they knew you were coming home,” she grins. “I want to see their faces when they see you.”  
Blackwood’s grin flashes bright and brilliant.  
“You all right, then?” Chelle asks, her gaze making a more leisurely passage over his roughened knuckles and tanned arms, up to his scruff-shaded jaw and his slightly parted lips.  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “What about you? You well? You look well – you look – gorgeous.”  
Chelle lifts her head and shakes her hair back. She looks down, at the distinct bulge inside the crotch of his camouflage pants, and then up to meet his sharpening gaze. She twitches her nose, and opens her mouth with a quick, meaningless quirk.  
“Five, you said?” Blackwood says, his eyelids sliding half-closed so that his eyes are shaded by the thick, long fringe of his eyelashes. “It’s only twenty past four, now.”  
“I know,” Chelle says, and she catches her bottom lip between her teeth and leans back against the wall.  
“Oh, Christ,” Blackwood says sharply, and he surges at her, one stride enough to bring him right up against her. He winds his arms around her hips and shoves her up the wall, high enough so that when she arches and gasps, he has only to push his face forwards and he’s buried nose and mouth against her cleavage.  
“Oh Christ, I missed you,” he groans into the open neckline of her shirt.  
For a fraction of second Chelle grimaces in annoyance, but then Blackwood gets his mouth to skin and she melts back against the wall, her eyes falling almost shut and her mouth falling open.  
“Oh – I know you did, baby, I know you did,” she gasps, as he twists his hips and fits himself against the hollow between her thighs.

  
Blackwood/Sally Donovan:

There are already half a dozen police cars and two ambulances at the scene. A couple of firearms officers are standing at the entrance to the alleyway, wearing black body armor and holding their rifles with ostentatious nonchalance. Sally thrusts her identification at them and hurries past. Several more officers, two EMTs, and a couple of other figures are clustered around two men on the ground, one sitting and one kneeling.  
As Sally strides towards them, she sees that the two civilians on their feet are Greg and Sherlock.  
“Are you okay?” Sally says to Lestrade.  
“Yeah, we’re fine,” Lestrade says, his glance including Sherlock in his answer, “but Doctor Watson got clipped.”  
“It’s fine, it barely broke the skin,” John says from where he’s sitting on the ground, his jacket and shirt hanging on only one shoulder, exposing the blood-stained sleeve of his tee-shirt.  
The man attending to John – wrapping a length of bandage around John’s biceps and tying it off with quick efficiency – isn’t an EMT. He’s dressed in blue jeans, a thin brown sweater, and an olive green bush-jacket. It’s hard to judge his height while he’s on one knee and leaning over John, but Sally’s struck by the sheer width of his shoulders inside his jacket, and the way his upper arms fill its sleeves.  
“You want to go to the hospital?” he asks John, “or do you want me to try and truss it? It needs a couple of stitches.”  
“No offense meant, but I’ll take the hospital,” John smirks.  
“None taken,” the other man says.  
He glances up, noticing Sally’s presence.  
“Sergeant Blackwood,” Sherlock says, “this is Sally.”  
Blackwood unfolds up onto his feet, allowing Sally to more accurately assess the extensive spread of his chest inside his open jacket.  
“How do you do, Sally,” he says, just the faintest curve lifting one corner of his mouth.  
“It’s Detective Sergeant Donovan,” Sally says.  
Blackwood’s mouth straightens, but his eyes sharpen with interest.  
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he says.  
Sally glances suspiciously at Sherlock, but he’s staring at Blackwood with a pout of obvious surprise and confusion on his face.  
“All right, haul me up,” John says, and Blackwood turns away again to help him.

 

Terra Incognita (Blackwood/Sally Donovan)

“I can give you ten minutes, no more,” Sally says, as Blackwood turns the latchkey and shoulders the door open.  
“Great, because I only need five,” Blackwood says, lunging up the narrow staircase.  
Sally closes the door behind her and follows him more sedately. At the top of the stairs an open doorway reveals a tiny but impeccably clean and rather elaborately decorated bathroom. The next door is also standing open; the bedroom is also quite small, but spotless and rather ambitiously luxurious with a billowy comforter and three frilled pillows arranged on their points across the width of the bed. Blackwood is leaning over a dresser drawer, scooping out a stack of neatly folded tee shirts and dumping them into an olive canvas duffle bag at his feet.  
“You’re sleeping with your ex-wife,” Sally says, but her intonation makes it purely an observation, not an accusation.  
“No,” Blackwood says, swinging the duffle bag up and then down again at the foot of the closet. “I’m sleeping with all of my ex-wives.”  
He plucks a pair of sneakers from the bottom of the closet and adds them to his bag. He strips a couple of shirts and a pair of pants from hangers, folding and rolling them before tucking them into the duffle. He swings it up and takes a step towards the doorway.  
“Look,” he says, his golden-brown eyes flicking aside from Sally’s steady dark stare. “I can stop with Kathy and Chelle, but Abbie wants another baby and I don’t want her to have to - ”  
He stops, his gaze falling back to Sally’s.  
“ – so, it’s up to you,” he says.  
He steps past her, out of the room. She turns and follows him again. He’s in the bathroom, gathering things into a tan wash bag. There’s barely room for him – his shoulders practically bridge the space between cabinet door and shower curtain – so Sally stays on the landing. He turns again and comes out of the bathroom. Sally stares up at him with a slight scowl.  
“That was four minutes,” Blackwood says. “I’m ready to go.”  
Sally doesn’t move, or speak. Blackwood presses his lips together, then bends forwards a little. Sally’s eyes go round. Blackwood leans farther, his intent unmistakable.  
“You’re seriously planning on kissing me for the first time,” Sally says, “right after you tell me you’re trying to get your ex-wife pregnant.”  
“Yeah,” Blackwood says with just a hint of apology. “That’s my plan. What’s your plan?”  
Sally pulls her shoulders up, and then drops them heavily.  
“I – my – my plan is to let you,” she says.  
Blackwood’s precisely bowed mouth stretches into a smile, and then softens again as he leans the last few inches down to bring his lips to hers.

 

What Chelle says to Sally Donovan about Blackwood:

“Listen,” Chelle says, setting her mug down with a firm rap against the table. “He’s on a corporal’s wages and he’s got five kids; a one fifth share of not much is not bloody much at all. But my girls adore him, and he loves every one of his kids like you’d have to see it to believe it. But you’ll never have him, and I don’t mean the three of us or the five kids. I mean Elizabeth R. It doesn’t matter if you’re well or sick, happy or sad, if you’re pregnant or in the bleeding delivery suite – if she whistles, he’ll go running and you won’t get so much as a backwards glance.”  
She lifts her mug again, flexing her fingers around it tightly. She pauses, the rim almost brushing her lips.  
“If you can handle that, then God bless the pair of you,” she says somewhat grudgingly. “And if you can’t, well – you got to admit though, he makes beautiful kids. And that patio out the back, he did that all himself in an afternoon, an’all.”

When chelle refers to ‘Elizabeth R’ she means Queen Elizabeth - it’s from ‘Elizabeth Regina’, meaning ‘Elizabeth the Queen’. So that whole thing, that ‘Elizabeth R’ is the most important woman in his life, it’s just how Chelle is framing that _40 commando_ is the most important thing in Blackwood's life.

 

 

 **Fanart:** [  
****](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280455)

  

  * [nininghasfeelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280455)
  
  



**Commando personality quiz :**  
You scored: Blackwood  
You are: Magnificent. You’re impulsive, adventurous, optimistic, and open-minded. You thrive on excitement, chaos, and drama – which is good, because you cause all three without even meaning to. You’re warm, generous, and romantic, though you tend to be rather unsubtle and you’d rather stab yourself in the eye than practice any kind of introspection.  
Blackwood, you’re the one for me. Five foot ten of heavily muscled, testosterone fueled stupidity. A man whose quest for the quiet life has yielded three ex-wives, five children, a job in a warzone, and an affair with a kid whose idea of discretion is emerging from your tent stark naked and giving a double victory-salute to the company officer as he passes by. You are the single best argument for polygamy ever put forward: your daughters adore you, your exes aren’t dating anyone else seriously because they like having you shack up with them for six weeks each every year, and you can get a woman pregnant just by looking at her breasts. The fact that your solution to your current situation is to try and get married a fourth time is a testament to your optimism, and your complete inability to learn from your mistakes. The fact that Sally Donovan ends up involved in this circus is a testament to how fucking amazing you are in bed.


	2. William McMath

  


Described in 7 Out of 7 Royal Marines Agree as:  
...an inch or two shorter than Sherlock, with a tight, dense musculature that looks deceptively slender when fully clothed. His reddish blond hair is buzzed to plush velvet all over his scalp. His eyebrows and eyelashes are light brown, though they – like his gray-brown eyes - look darker against his skin, which stubbornly refuses to tan to anything beyond a creamy rose-gold. His features are strong but rather narrow and raw-edged, with an unfinished quality that time may yet turn to something quite striking.

He's 24 years old at TTOBB.

McMath is from Tottenham – identifies as bi, and his relationships and hook-ups have been pretty evenly split.

Pronounced with the ‘th’ fully enunciated, McMath's last name is Irish (though the correct spelling would be Macmath), but his forefathers have been living in England for several generations, so the pronunciation and the spelling have anglicized by now.

Mcmath is tough, He’s somewhere in the Ewan McGregor to Paul Bettany thing — fairly narrow face, marked browline, fair and freckly and looks a little older than he is.

McMath — Libra, first house Libra, a bunch of personal planets in Pisces, Venus in Virgo

Tatoos:  
McMath’s the one with the most serious ink job: The densely detailed wings tattooed from his nape to his waist, and then forwards over the constellation of stars that wrap around his right hip.  
The stars are the constellation Draco, which is circumpolar - it’s always visible in the northern hemisphere. The fact that it’s on his hip/waist (a rather feminine placement) is suggestive too, it may have been a sort of inchoate declaration of his bisexuality. He got this tattoo shortly before he joined the Army.  
The wings are clearly (in their visual rendering) angel’s wings. The key there is that they’re so large, and powerful looking, they’re a million miles from the dinky shoulderblade only ones you usually see, you could imagine he really could fly if they were real. At the same time, they wrap around him so protectively on his shoulders and sides. mcmath started getting them done when he came back from his first combat tour. He really found his sense of purpose in the Royal Marines, but it wasn’t about his career or the mission it was (as it is for many military personnel) about a sense of commitment and protectiveness towards the other people in his unit.  
The wings aren’t colored black, they’re uncolored, but the sheer amount of black ink in the outlining and detailing means the overall effect is massive and dark, but when you get close you realize how delicate the whole thing is (beautiful work, the guy who did it was a real artist). There’s nothing grim or brooding about them.  
McMath’s family is probably the most genuinely religious of all the guys families(mcmath was an altar boy), and although McMath doesn’t have a whole heap of *faith*, he has assimilated the images and themes.  
Like the tag says, “so you actually are an actual angel then?”  
McMath didn’t literally think this out, he just wanted a tattoo and then he wanted a really big tattoo, and he looked at a bunch of designs and liked the ones he ended up getting. I’m talking here about the subsurface stuff that shaped the ‘I like this one’.  
I think a theme that runs through McMath’s life is ‘knowing where you’re going’. I think it’s something McMath has struggled with (you can see his tendency to drift in his relationship with Henn in Afghanistan). His tattoos are an unconscious expression of aspiration.

Family background:  
McMath is the eldest of maybe three children, with a fairly extended family close by. They’re solidly lower middle class. His is a very musical family - and his musical tastes come from his dad’s record collection. Rather than buying a trashed guitar from a friend’s brother, McMath probably got a beauty of a reconditioned one from his dad for some early teen birthday, and is probably a pretty decent player (make it bass, if you wish, because his dad idolized Phil Lynott).  
McMath also has a good singing voice, and grandparents who expect tear-inducing renditions of things like ‘Danny boy’ and ‘I’ll take you home again Kathleen’ at christenings, weddings, and funerals.  
His deathliest secret (which he will take to his grave) is that he was a champion step-dancer in his early teens. His only slightly less deadly secret (which lasts until his wedding, when the demon drink and an insistent sister conspire to ruin him) is that he went on to dominate the competition in the (admittedly tiny) north London Carolina shag scene for a couple of years after that.  
His competition partner was his sister, and she’s in the Royal Navy. And their little brother is planning to take Commando selection right after his A-levels.

His father and sister and about one third of his uncles and cousins are in the Navy, and another third are in the Royal Irish Regiment. His family are incredibly proud of his being a Commando, and his younger brother is determined to make selection as well.

How long is Mac’s penis exactly?  
9.38 inches erect. It’s decently long, it’s not fucking epic or anything. Its Henn-taming quality is not sheer length. It’s also that it’s pretty thick especially at the base (it tapers noticeably along the length), the glans is large for the thickness of the shaft immediately behind it, so the corona is very defined, and the shaft has a positively heroic curve, so that if you look at it side-on when it’s erect it sort of bows out from the root and curves back in towards his stomach at the tip. The effect, when his penetrated partner is facing him, is … capable of rendering Thomas Henn MARRIED.

McMath and music:  
What’s in McMath’s MP3:  
generally: alt rock, old school punk, old school ska, r&b  
(musical tastes heavily shaped by his father’s record collection)  
there may or may not have been teenaged McMath in tartan bondage trousers and ten-hole docs  
six songs McMath loves  
Linkin Park “what I’ve done”  
Dope “You spin me right round”  
Seethe “Remedy”  
Stiff little fingers “Alternative ulster”  
The jam “That’s entertainment”  
Lloyd Price “Stagger lee”

The bit where the groom’s supporters perform a dance number.  
“We’re commandos, we don’t dance,” Cullen says, looking slightly panicked as he glances around the group for confirmation.  
“We’re commandos, we do whatever the fuck it takes to get the job done,” McMath says firmly. “If Hinde needs us to dance, we’re going to fucking dance. I want to see you lepping like a fucking herring, Cullen.”  
(apparently you can take the mcmath family out of the bog, but it won’t help.)

"Mac doesn’t strike as much of a dancer."  
McMath would beg to differ, since he learned most of what he knows about hand-to-hand combat in mosh pits.  
Henn says that’s not “dancing”, to which McMath says “and that shite you listen to is not music, so we’re even”.

His friendship with Barr:

Barr and McMath are pretty close - they come from the same part of London and they joined John's section at the same time and they have similar fairly low-key senses of humor - and every few weeks they get wasted and invariably mcmath will start to talk about how awesome Henn is, and then he'll get a little quiet, and say something kind of bitchy about Blackwood like "you'd think he'd take up with someone his own age" or something. And then Barr will mime stabbing himself in the eye but he'll go ahead anyway and tell McMath that he has to stop fucking Henn because he'll never get over him if he's having sex with him. And McMath will be all "you're right man, you're absolutely right, i'm done, it's done." and then twenty-four hours later Barr's walking past McMath's billet and he can hear henn yelling "oh fuck me yeah fuck that arse fuck it will" and barr's like "MCMATH YOU ARE LITERALLY A FUCKING IDIOT".

 

“I had sex with Henn,” McMath says very quickly.  
Barr narrows his eyes, but his beer bottle barely falters in its smooth arc to his lips.  
“Okay,” he says, after he’s sipped and swallowed. “That’s - okay.”  
“Yeah,” McMath says very firmly. “It’s fine. Y’know, it’s - fine.”  
“Oh you - fucking idiot,” Barr says. “Don’t - don’t even - "  
He lunges at McMath and shoves the neck of his beer bottle inside the back neckline of McMath’s tee-shirt. McMath yelps as beer foams down his spine, and he grabs Barr’s wrist and twists. Barr hooks a boot round  
one leg of McMath’s chair and flips it. McMath doesn’t let go, however, so they both go down in a flailing heap over the chair.

\------

 

"Okay, look man, I know what you need to do," Barr says, sweeping the debris from the table in front of him with his forearm. "I have a plan."  
McMath smirks around the neck of his beer bottle, but he's paying attention.  
"So, the salt's you," Barr says, setting the salt cellar down with great deliberation. "And Henn's - what's Henn's range score? Twenty four?"  
"Twenty-five," McMath says, his expression sharpening into curiosity.  
"Twenty-five, shit that kid can shoot," Barr says. "Okay, the pepper's Henn."  
He sets the pepper down several inches away from the salt.  
"So what's the plan?" McMath asks.  
"The plan is that the salt will stop fucking the pepper and get his fucking shit together," Barr says, flipping his fingers against McMath's forehead.

 

His relationship with Henn:

If you ask McMath (when he fell in love with Henn), he’ll say that it was when he and Henn and Hinde and Barr had the infamous four day leave in Munich. Henn won’t pick up civilians, so he and McMath ended up having sex with each other every night, and McMath felt this weird little tug in his chest, like, it was almost like he and Henn were a couple. If you ask Barr, he’ll say it was when Henn walked into the common area his first day in Sangin and said to McMath, “Hi, I’m Henn. Where’s the fight?”

Henn is fucking Blackwood most of the time, with occasional sidetrips to fuck McMath, and sometimes he can persuade them both to pile on at the same time. He's also picking up vast amounts of random cock from the other Commandos. As far as Blackwood and Henn are concerned, the whole Blackwood-Henn-McMath thing is a no-strings, in-zone only arrangement ("three fuck buddies" Blackwood says in TTOBB). But McMath is sincerely interested in Henn, and it kind of stings every time henn passes him over and goes sniffing around Blackwood for some action.  
If it’s Henn/McMath it’s generally McMath topping and Henn’s still super bossy no matter what end he’s on. If it’s all three of them, Blackwood takes it from both MacMath and Henn.  
Whether Blackwood considers himself to be still in combat or not determines whether or not he’s still having sex with Henn, and that is definitely a big factor Henn and McMath’s dynamic.

Blackwood/Henn/McMath snipet:  
“Ah God, Jesus, that’s it, I’m done,” Henn husks. “Everybody the fuck off.”  
McMath rolls aside right away, but Blackwood stretches out along the length of Henn’s body one more time and licks a wet stripe from his chin to his temple.  
“I said stop,” Henn sputters, squirming.  
“Sorry,” Blackwood grins, and pulls back as far as his knees.  
He extends a hand, which Henn grasps, and pulls the other man into a sit. Blackwood is still grinning, and Henn’s momentary annoyance turns to a smile as Blackwood leans in on his hands and knees and brushes a brief kiss onto the tape across the bridge of Henn’s nose.  
“You’re still the prettiest girl in Bravo Baker,” Blackwood says fondly.  
Henn snorts, and socks him a solid punch in the right biceps. Blackwood drops to his shoulder, howling, and rolls onto his back. Henn crawls over him and off the platform, looking around for his clothes while McMath stretches and scratches and squints out through the tent flap at Hinde throwing rocks into the river.

The first time Henn and McMath had sex was about four weeks after Henn joined Bravo Baker section. McMath was, of course, always ready to look out for a newcomer, but he was constantly amazed and delighted by how much Henn didn’t need looking out for. Henn was tough enough, smart enough, and conscientious enough that within a month no one thought of him as the new guy at all. Anyway. Henn was sleeping his way through 40 Commando in no particular order, and he’d had sex with Blackwood three or four times by the end of his first month. McMath got bumped to the top of the line when Henn walked in on him sleeping naked and uncovered on a cot, with a raging hard-on. Henn just said out loud “you’re fucking kidding me, right? fucking hell” when he saw the majesty that is McMath’s cock. McMath woke up, sort of swore blurrily at Henn, and tried to cover himself. And Henn wouldn’t let him have the sheet, and then he wouldn’t let McMath go back to sleep, and then he wouldn’t let McMath do anything except fuck him.

Blackwood and McMath have never been together except with Henn. Somewhat ironically, they’d make a good tour-only pairing - McMath has the quiet good sense that Blackwood looks for, and McMath has a little crush on Blackwood who is after all a hell of a specimen of commando. But Blackwood would probably feel the age gap was too big, and McMath would probably feel he’d rather someone who wasn’t in such denial re being straight and shagging guys. McMath is comfortably bi, and he would feel a bit weird being with some guy who claims ‘it doesn’t count because it’s a war’.

In the Indelible verse, Hinde gets married pretty soon after the commando goes home. At the wedding, McMath is resolutely ignoring Henn and courting all of Rami’s sisters at the same time. Barr is about to leave the marines, and McMath has sworn to him that he really is done with the whole Henn thing. And Barr’s fantastically drunk (he’s a bit of lightweight anyway) and he’s just met this amazing girl and Hinde and Rami are just on fire they’re so in love and Sherlock and John are there and then Henn starts poking Barr with a stick because mcmath’s ignoring him and Barr just. loses. his. shit. and tells Henn how stupid he is not to see what’s painfully obvious to everyone else. And Henn starts moving towards McMath and Barr’s all ‘don’t - don’t fuck him over again when he’s trying to forget you’ and Henn shows just how neat and swift a Commando can be putting someone else down and he goes across the floor and detaches McMath from Rami’s sister and kisses him and Barr’s like ‘kill me now’ but you know, it all works out just fine. Henn’s already decided he’s getting a bit fucking old for all this messing about, and once he’s presented with the challenge of marriage and not breaking McMath’s heart, he’s inspired to do his best.

Same story, different words:  
Barr gets completely wiped at Hinde's wedding and tells Henn he's a selfish immature little shit who hasn't noticed that McMath's serious about him and it's killing McMath to be the guy Henn goes to when he's not in the mood for Blackwood and Blackwood's clearly making a run at that black woman detective Sherlock knows and Mcmath's dancing with one of Rami's sisters and none of them are getting any younger and Henn you're an ass. To which Henn reels across the dance floor, detaches McMath from Rami's sister, and kisses him in front of everybody. Rami's parents are like "Jesus is there a single straight guy in that outfit?", John's like "HENN? HENN's settling down??" and Sherlock's just "ah, i honestly didn't think that would all come out until after the garter throw".

After that, Henn drags McMath into the gents, being all “you love me, you actually love me. I could be with you, Mac, really I could, it doesn’t have to be about sex - fuck, I can’t get this open - okay, got it - I could be with you the other ways too, sex isn’t everything - just - fuck, just push it - oh Christ yes - i’m not just about sex - oh fuck yeah, all the fucking way in”

They had a joint stag night, which Blackwood arranged because there is nothing about stag nights he doesn’t know.  
“What the hell happened to you?” John demands when Sherlock reels back to the table twenty minutes later with his shirt torn open to his breastbone and a necktie hanging out of the open fly of his suit pants.  
“I - I don’t even - ” Sherlock says, his hands spreading helplessly.  
“Wait. Is that a Coldstream Guards tie?” John says in utter confusion.  
“Oh,” Sherlock says in relief. “Well that explains - no, that explains nothing.”

The invitation goes:  
… to celebrate the union of  
Thomas Edwin Henn  
The Royal Marines  
and  
William Francis McMath  
The Royal Marines

Barr was McMath’s best man, and Hinde was Henn’s. The whole thing was quite a news event – the gay wedding of two serving Royal Marine Commandos, both of whom had been recently mentioned in dispatches for their part in a mission that resulted in their section co being awarded the conspicuous Gallantry Cross – and the papers went so far as to note that he had gotten married to another man, too. George Burrows was caught completely wrong-footed by a reporter and was quoted as saying that ‘the Royal Marines in general and Three Commando Brigade in particular are proud to recognize the heterosexual officers and soldiers serving alongside the rest of us’. His wife still chaffs him about it.  
Henn finally sullied the tanned, unmarked perfection of his skin for his first wedding anniversary. He and McMath were apart for several weeks while Henn was on a training exercise in Morocco and McMath was stuck in Taunton with his arm in plaster, teaching the incoming sniper squad not to shoot each other. When henn came home, McMath found the result of a stop at a really good tattooist in Tanjah – a single gracefully drawn and beautifully detailed feather curling on the tanned skin between Henn’s shoulder blades.

40 commando cycles back out of combat, and Henn gets promoted to Corporal and McMath gets Sergeant. After their leave -- which they spend traveling together -- they set up housekeeping in a teeny flat in Taunton with an enormous tabby tom cat called Big Bastard.)  
They live in this teeny flat with chintz drapes because the landlady imagined her married out-of-quarters couple would include some wide-eyed girl adrift in this town of Army men and she wanted to make a nice little retreat for her. And Henn’s all “big wide blue eyes, I’m an army bride - hell, i’m an Army bride twice, once for me and once for mac.”  
On occasions they can spend an hour lying in bed.  
They have a cat. It’s possible he is some sense a regimental cat — that Mac and Henn end up with him when 42 Commando ships out to Afghanistan.  
McMath stays in for another couple of years and then leaves to become a teacher.

 

What they call each other:  
Mac calling Henn "Baby boy"  
It doesn’t seem to fit them at all except that it does but it’s doing something completely counter to what that would usually denote and for what superficially looks like a fuck-buddy relationship that went permanent, they actually have a really complicated dynamic going on. i mean, Henn is just fuck-tough, if it came down to a knife-fight after a fifty mile forced march and no food for four days, Henn would beat McMath because Henn is Commando through to his bones whereas McMath just good at his job. Yet McMath calls him "baby boy" and somehow it’s about how helpless McMath is because he loves Henn so much.  
Under no circumstances does McMath call Henn “baby boy” except when it’s just the two of them, he can’t do it when Blackwood’s there. Henn would kill him. If anyone except McMath said something like that, Henn would flip out. He’s keenly aware that he *looks* like the baby of the outfit and always will, so he’s sensitive about it. The fact that McMath is only two years older has some bearing on the fact that Henn accepts it from him - and that Henn is a rather more dominant personality than McMath. It’s an expression of something quite subtle and very private between them - it’s a million miles away from any ‘baby boy/daddy’ dynamic, it’s not about McMath being dominant at all, it’s more like McMath humbling himself by making this not about how tough and vital Henn is - argh, it’s really hard to explain but — i know, it’s basically the opposite of what’s happening in Bootnecks where John and Blackwood are very much operating from the strength of their personas. McMath using ‘baby boy’ is a gesture towards how his relationship with Henn isn’t about the personas (Henn/Blackwood is), it’s something that’s quite vulnerable and potentially painful (for McMath, at least, and until things get sorted out.)  
McMath submits to Henn - because regardless of who’s topping there, there’s no doubt that it’s Henn who’s calling the shots, so if Henn’s a ‘baby boy’ and McMath’s letting him decide when and where and how, then it’s actually a way of McMath marking his helplessness in this relationship.

Billy or Will?  
Somehow Will is right and Billy is completely wrong for Hinde, but will doesn’t seem right for McMath. Will is infinitely more graceful, but mcmath just is a more casual, earthy kind of character. With McMath’s background, people would think he was bit of a wanker calling himself ‘Will’.

 

mcmath has his scar in jwa. i want to emphasize that it’s not very spectacular at all, within a couple of years it’s faded to pink, and ten years later you’d hardly notice it if you didn’t know what you were looking for. it took four stitches to close it, and most people assume he got hit on the head by something. something that wasn’t a bullet, i mean.

Fanart:  
[McMath in Afghanistan - nininghasfeelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280446)  
[McMath in Taunton - ninonghasfeelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280448)  
[McMath and Henry Barr - ningshasfeelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/288951)  


 

Commando personality quiz:  
You scored: McMath  
You are: Reserved among strangers but slyly funny with your friends. You’re not showy; you value expertise and hard work, but you’re sometimes too passive for your own good.  
McMath is sort of the stealth star of the Bravo Baker section. He doesn’t have kick-ass lines like Hinde or Henn, and he’s not John’s sidekick like Blackwood. He’s the leader of the Bravo fire-team, which means he has to exert a certain amount of authority, but at the same time he’s subordinate to Blackwood even though Blackwood’s the number two in the Alpha fire-team - it’s a complicated gear shift that he handles with absolute ease. McMath considers authority to be important only insofar as it makes the section run well; he’s happy to be in charge or not, just as long as everything’s running smoothly. McMath’s steadiness and reasonableness are big factors in making the whole McMath/Henn/Blackwood arrangement sustainable - without his calming influence, the Blackwood/Henn thing would crash and burn fairly quickly. McMath’s happy ending is something of an accident though - he’s pretty much given up on Henn by the time of Hinde’s wedding, and it’s Barr’s drunken haranguing that actually prompts Henn’s epiphany, not any action of McMath’s. If McMath had had the confidence to force a choice sooner, that whole thing could have been avoided, but McMath’s too self-effacing to see the possible outcomes as anything other than status quo or Blackwood/Henn without him. Though, given McMath’s pliable, positive nature, I suspect he might also have made a decent stab at falling in love with Rami’s sister.


	3. Henry Barr

  


Described in 7 out of 7 Royal Marines agree as:  
... about the same height as Garrett - a couple of inches shorter than Sherlock - but a much heavier build, with thick smooth curves of muscle under his pale coffee skin. The crisp black curls of his hair are shorn tightly; his eyebrows and eyelashes are glossy black too, but his eyes are golden brown and his skin is pale enough to bear a scattering of mahogany-brown freckles across the broad bridge of his nose and the flats of his cheekbones. His uniform shoulder flash - the words Royal Marines in a curve above and Commando beneath - is replicated as a simple black tattoo at the top of his left arm, and the words One People curl in large, ornate script across his back just below the nape of his neck.

He's 24 years old at TTOBB

Tatoo: His uniform shoulder flash - the words Royal Marines in a curve above and Commando beneath - is replicated as a simple black tattoo at the top of his left arm, and the words One People curl in large, ornate script across his back just below the nape of his neck.

Sagittarius, first house Libra, almost every personal planet except his sun in Capricorn.

Barr is from Tottenham – identifies as straight. He’s been in circle jerks on tour, and he made out with Henn once but he felt kind of yuck about it afterwards.

Barr's one time with Henn:  
Barr’s as subject to sexual frustration as anyone, and he’s not in principle opposed to the idea of sex with another guy if that’s the only sex that’s available. He figured, if he was going to try it, Henn would presumably be fucking incredible at it. He and Henn ended up on the couch in the common area one evening. They spent a long time necking, and then adjourned to the Alpha fire-team tent and necked some more and then there was a reciprocal hand-job, though if Barr was 100% honest, he’d say he found the feel of another guy’s cock in his hand kind of unsettling. And that was that. Barr feels it was a worthwhile experiment, it just didn’t pan out.  
McMath was kind of chuffed about it - both that ‘his’ Henn was so irresistible that even an actually straight guy like Barr was tempted, and it hadn’t panned out so he wouldn’t have to see Henn sniffing around Barr as well as Blackwood.

Barr has an uncle who served 4 years in the Army. Apart from that, there’s no military service history in his family at all, and except for his father, his family is faintly horrified by the fact that he’s a Commando. His father is perplexed but proud.

The first conversation about Henn?  
“I had sex with Henn,” McMath says very quickly.  
Barr narrows his eyes, but his beer bottle barely falters in its smooth arc to his lips.  
“Okay,” he says, after he’s sipped and swallowed. “That’s - okay.”  
“Yeah,” McMath says very firmly. “It’s fine. Y’know, it’s - fine.”  
“Oh you - fucking idiot,” Barr says. “Don’t - don’t even - “  
He lunges at McMath and shoves the neck of his beer bottle inside the back neckline of McMath’s tee-shirt. McMath yelps as beer foams down his spine, and he grabs Barr’s wrist and twists. Barr hooks a boot round one leg of McMath’s chair and flips it. McMath doesn’t let go, however, so they both go down in a flailing heap over the chair.  
Etc etc.

Barr was McMath’s best man

Barr actually ends up with Cora McMath, McMath's sister.

They met at Henn and Mac’s wedding. She and Barr were last seen “borrowing” a bottle of vodka, his jacket draped over her shoulders and his hand under it, resting on the small of her back. After a night of increasing intimacy on the dance floor they went back to his room for a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style shot contest where they swapped stories about Mac. Cora has all the pre-Commando dirt, but there’s plenty that Mac’s chosen to not tell his big sister, too.

Barr’s notorious inability to hold his liquor means that technically Cora won that one, but it ended much more innocently than anyone will believe, to the point where both of them have given up protesting when the subject comes up. He passed out fully dressed on her bed, and she slept next to him in her gown. The most scandalous thing that happened was Barr giving her an incredible foot rub.

yeah, cora and barr at the wedding reception was some of the most fiercely and ineffectively suppressed mutual attraction ever in the history of everything. they were each thinking ‘god i’d fuck you so hard if you weren’t my mate’s sibling/my sibling’s mate’.

of course, their protests about nothing happening that night were kind of undermined by the fact that when they came to again the following morning, they were already wound around each other, cora had both hands up barr’s tee shirt and barr was sucking the side of cora’s neck. they were practically fucking before they woke up enough to realize they both had hangovers and foul breath.

“Breakfast, shower, talk,” Barr says breathlessly.

“Agreed,” Cora says, starting to sit up.

She stalls halfway, realizing that a silky swathe of her dress is pinned between Barr’s hip and the bed. Barr pushes his weight up onto one hand; Cora reaches to pull the fold of fabric free, and he takes hold of her wrist.

“I want to,” he says quietly, staring up at her. “I just - I - “

“I know,” Cora says, her narrow lips quirking to one side.

Barr grins. He presses the pad of his thumb between the tendons inside her wrist briefly, and then lets go of her.

Then they went downstairs to the breakfast buffet in the clothes they’d been in for almost 24 hours, and hashed out the ‘execution, support, command’ aspects of what was about to become Their Relationship.

“I’m – I’m just not very good at wasting time,” Barr says, digging the edge of his spoon vindictively into the strawberry on the rim of his plate. “I’m not good at things – that don’t work out.”

Cora lifts her gaze deliberately from his fingers to his face.

“Billy loves you,” she says, and Barr’s eyes come up to meet hers. “It’d kill him if you and I were on bad terms.”

“I know,” Barr says, his expression flickering though something soft and pained to something harder and surer. “But I won’t - ”

“Neither will I,” Cora cuts in.

Barr frowns slightly, but his eyes clear.

“I’m not interested in wasting time either – yours or mine,”Cora says, her voice steady and her face composed, though her gaze falls away from his slightly. “I’m not interested in hurting Billy. I’m not interested in something that won’t work out. I’m not interested in drama, or mucking about, or anybody’s stupid shite. I want someone who knows where he’s going, and what he wants, and will go after it.”

“Marry me,” Barr blurts.

“Don’t be stupid,” Cora says, but without any real edge. “I’m not saying yes to someone I just met.”

“No, of course not,” Barr says, his smile lighting in his eyes and then suffusing his whole face. “Date for six months, engaged for a year, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cora breathes. “Okay.”

3\. Barr has no intention of renewing once he’s done his four years and is honorably discharged in 2010.

At Hinde's wedding:  
Barr’s fantastically drunk (he’s a bit of lightweight anyway) and he’s just met this amazing girl and Hinde and Rami are just on fire they’re so in love and Sherlock and John are there and then Henn starts poking Barr with a stick because McMath’s ignoring him and Barr just. loses. his. shit. and tells Henn how stupid he is not to see what’s painfully obvious to everyone else. And Henn starts moving towards McMath and Barr’s all ‘don’t - don’t fuck him over again when he’s trying to forget you’ and Henn shows just how neat and swift a commando can be putting someone else down and he goes across the floor and detaches McMath from rami’s sister and kisses him and Barr’s like ‘kill me now’ but you know, it all works out just fine.

Fanart:

[Henry Barr, sketch - seiji](http://archiveofourown.org/works/284119/chapters/452446)   
[Henry Barr, color portrait - seiji](http://archiveofourown.org/works/284119/chapters/458375)   
[Billy McMath and Henry Barr, - niningshasfeelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/288951)   
[Henry Barr, - niningshasfeelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/286311)   


Commando personality quiz  
You scored: Barr  
You are: Caring and compassionate, but quite pragmatic – you get frustrated when you feel people aren’t being realistic. You’re quietly ambitious and very private – you’re more comfortable dealing with other people’s problems than talking about your own. You tend to close up if people push too much, but when someone can stand back and let you open up in your own time, you’re a loyal and loving friend.  
Barr is superficially very similar to McMath – he has the same steady, calm temperament and the same focus on the welfare of the whole section even at the expense of his personal comfort. However, he has a lot more steel in him than McMath – he can get quite frustrated with McMath’s passivity and self-effacement. Barr’s all about having a goal, and a plan, and a timeline you can mark your progress off on; he likes things clear and crisp and uncomplicated. Barr has a lot of pride, he hates having to justify himself to anyone, but especially to people he thinks don’t understand his values. Henn completely misconstrues his motives for trying to persuade McMath to cut Henn off, but Barr doesn’t condescend to explain himself to Henn. Barr’s emotionally very self-sufficient; believing he’s doing the right thing is much more important to him than other people’s approval. It’s a rum-fueled failure of control when he tells Henn what’s going on with McMath, and when Henn drags McMath off Rami’s sister and kisses him, Barr’s honest reaction is “oh God what have I done?” and it takes years of blissfully wedded McMath/Henn before he forgives himself.


	4. William Hinde

  


Described in 7 Out of Seven Royal Marines Agree as:  
...a inch or two taller than Sherlock and has the same long, slender bones, but his are carrying twenty pounds more clean muscle than Sherlock’s. His cropped hair is ebony-brown with a thick disorderly wave that makes it curl around his hairline untidily. His eyebrows and eyelashes and eyes are all the same deep warm ebony and his skin is caramel brown. His features are strong and straight and might almost approach austerity if it weren’t for the fleshy tip of his nose and the ornate curves of his lips.

He's 24 at the time of TTOBB

Tatoos: Hinde doesn’t have any.

Hinde’s name: Somehow "Will" is right and "Billy" is completely wrong for Hinde. Hinde rhymes with ‘pinned’ not ‘pined’.

Hinde: Taurus, first house Libra, Venus in Gemini.

Hinde is from Bristol – identifies as straight. Even straighter than barr. Basically, the smell of another man is just fundamentally unsexy to Hinde. While solidly middle class, he comports himself like a young prince.

Hinde has no family history of military service at all, and his family were aghast when he joined up, though they’ve come to grudgingly accept that it does seem to have made something out of him.

Hinde is the one Barr vents to about McMath venting to him about Henn. Hinde just lets his eyes unfocus and goes ‘uh huh’ every fifty seconds or so.

Author's choice for Hinde:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEDABkDX-eQ&feature=related  
come in at 3:45, the guy in the nike tee shirt, QE fucking D.

His relationship with Rami.

Hinde met Rami on a three day leave in Paris, at an excruciatingly hip bhangra club. Rami noticed him first – it was hard not to, he was one of a dozen or so young men in a group at one end of the dancefloor. Six foot two, with the lean powerful build of a climber or a gymnast; he was wearing desert boots, black drainpipe jeans, and a thigh-length white cotton kurta with a simple, open slit neckline. He was by far the best dancer of the group – his movements simple and unstudied, but sure and fluid and utterly unself-conscious. When the music changed and he turned away, laughing, their eyes met. Rami felt his beauty – handsomeness was too insipid a word for it, he was beautiful, with his strong, straight features and long almond shaped eyes and ridiculously complicated mouth – she felt it like a physical blow. For a second he looked uncertain, soft, almost vulnerable, and then something in his eyes shifted and his expression narrowed. He started moving towards her through the crowd, and she could only stand – already breathless – and watch as he came up to her.  
“Jeh ne parl fransay,” he announced emphatically.  
“No, you really don’t, do you?” Rami winced sympathetically.  
“You speak English,” he crowed, throwing both hands out and then jerking them up into fists in utter triumph. “Yes. I’m Will. What’s your name? Can I buy you a drink? Do you want a dance?”  
Rami was already laughing, and he grinned at her, his black eyes gleaming in the dark and sparkling lights, and she couldn’t have said no if her life had depended on it.

 

Hinde/Rami in the different verses:

In TTOBB he meets her in the spring, and they’re engaged when he crosses the mountains with sherlock. In Indelible he doesn’t meet her until after he’s been in the mountains, when he takes a leave after the adventure - so that’s got to be the autumn of that year. So, mapping that timeline onto JWA, he’s either met her very recently and is engaged (they get engaged 10 days after they meet) or he’s about to meet her.

This should give an idea of how beautiful Hinde is:  
In TTOBB Hinde must go back to Sagin by himself so Sherlock can take his place in the chopper with the rest of the group.  
From TTOBB Chapter 9: “Sir, I can get a lot farther than Sangin for free.”  
His current record at that point was Sangin to Kandahar to Kabul to Berlin and back in just over twenty-four hours. The prevalence of women transport pilots on that run certainly helped, but although Hinde's straight as a die, he's not above giving melting looks to male pilots.  
So How did Hinde get back in TTOBB?  
Bummed a ride with some artillery guys out to the part of the air field the choppers generally use. Hung about smoking and looking attractive, and after a couple of dead ends, succeeded in identifying and chatting up the pilot of a chinook bringing soldiers to Camp Bastion. That flight was, of course, tons of fun because a Royal Marine is an object of interest and envy to any other soldier, bar the SAS and SBS, obviously. Then from Camp Bastion it was dead easy - half a dozen chopper runs are made between Bastion and Sangin everyday, weather permitting, and several of the pilots have been part of Hinde's 'I've got 12 hours leave I'm going to Abu Dhabi see you in the morning' escapades before. Anyhow, he was back in Sangin in time for lunch.

Hinde stays in the Royal Marines after he marries Rami. He stays in, he’s a career Royal Marine. He did wander into the Army and then into the Commandos, but it was absolutely the right place for him and he recognized that right away.

Hinde's wedding:

The bit where the men from each party try to lift each other. Hinde’s side has this sewn up. Rami’s male relatives are skinny academics, and her male friends are skinny academics or skinny journalists. Hinde’s dad is six foot and humps boxes in his grocery store, and hinde’s friends are a bunch of fucking commandos and Blackwood seriously weighs 240 lbs.

Ficlets:  
“You have got to be kidding me,” Rami says.  
“His name’s Surya,” Lala says. “Now, he’s a little younger than you - “  
“Oh for - “  
” - let me finish,” Lala insists. “He’s got a good job - he works for the government, apparently, so you know, very good job security and lots of prospects for promotion, though he does have to travel a lot, I believe.”  
Rami rolls her head in a loose circle, miming utterly enervating despair.  
“And he’s tall - six feet two, so that’s good,” Lala presses. “And very good looking.”  
“Oh my God,” Rami says, clapping her hand over one half of her face. “I can’t believe you want me to do this - it’s barbaric.”  
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Lala says, “no one expects you to marry him. Just meet him; you meet men all the time, what’s the difference?”  
Rami grimaces, but the edge of her outrage is definitely softening.  
“Look, what’s the worst that can happen?” Lala grins. “So you have dinner somewhere nice with some fellow who turns out to be just awful. What about that fellow you had dinner with who thought Jalalabad was a Hindi rapper? You picked him out all by yourself.”  
“Oh my God, I did,” Rami laughs. “All right, all right - I’ll meet him, oh my God.”

Hinde/Rami Scrap  
Rami smiles, but it’s shaky and uncertain.  
Hinde stands up, both hands clasping the gathered sheet at his groin.  
“Don’t go,” he says, and the words are hard-edged with the force it takes to push them past his own hesitation.  
Rami exhales hard, a sort of joyless laugh.  
“I can’t,” she says, her voice hoarser and rougher than it should be. “I’ve already switched - ”  
“I don’t mean don’t go now,” Hinde says, stepping nearer. “I mean don’t go at all. Stay with me.”  
“Wha – how would – that’s - ” Rami says, literally squirming where she stands.  
“I love you,” Hinde says, stepping close enough that the trailing sheet tangles around her feet too. “Don’t leave me.”  
“You don’t know the first thing about me,” Rami grimaces, her tears scorching down her cheeks. “You can’t - ”  
“I know I love you,” Hinde grinds. “I know I do. Give me a chance to find out the rest – that’s all I’m asking for, a chance, Rami - please.”  
“I can’t,” she gasps. “I can’t - I have to go.”  
He clenches his fists until his knuckles burn white inside his skin, and throws his head up frustration.  
“Don’t,” he snaps. “Rami, _don’t do this to us_.”  
“Stop,” she says, “please, you’re scaring me.”  
He presses his lips together, his nostrils flare, and his eyes are black fire as he stares at her, but he stands there silent and shaking while she wipes the heel of her hand across her cheeks and pulls the door open.

Fanart:  
[WIlliam Hinde - nininghasfeelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280452)  
[WIlliam Hinde - seiji](http://archiveofourown.org/works/284119/chapters/457608)  


Commando personality Quiz:  
You scored: Hinde  
You are: A sweetheart. You’re friendly, considerate, and deeply respectful of other people’s values and choices, but you’re no pushover. You work hard yourself and you expect everyone else to pull their weight too. You need a sense of purpose and a project though, because when you’re bored you can become destructive and just plain troublesome.  
Hinde is an interesting guy. He left school with mediocre soccer skills and a brazen but often successful shop-lifting style. He’d graduated to breaking into parked cars with ambitions towards a little light burglary when he joined the army in a fit of pique at his dad.  
In many ways he’s quite passive and pliable and easy-going; he’s generally happy to go along with whatever the group decides, and he’s not inclined to put himself forwards. Despite - or possible because of - this, he has a quiet, natural authority - he’s capable of great grace and strength in a crisis, and he’s fiercely protective of the people and principles that really matter to him.  
He’s a team-player, but without sacrificing his own individuality or losing his awareness of others as individuals. He’s intelligent, curious, and when his interest is engaged he’s tireless in pursuit of knowledge and understanding. He’s generally quite sensible and responsible, but he can make daring leaps of faith if necessary. He did, after all, run after Rami stark naked and go down on one knee to propose to her in the hotel lobby three days after he met her, even though he didn’t know her full name and she was leaving to meet some guy her family had picked out as being perfect for her.


	5. Ernest Garret

Decribed in 7 Out of 7 Royal Marines agree as:  
... shorter than Cullen but taller than Henn, with cropped dark brown hair and a distinctly Mediterranean or Semitic cast to his features – dark and sharp and strongly drawn. Clothed, his figure is striking for its width of shoulders and narrowness of hips, but when he strips his tee shirt off he reveals stunningly defined muscles twisting across his shoulders and down his arms and sides. His deeply tanned skin is marked with three heavy black kanji tattooed in a vertical line between his shoulder blades.(...)  
His flanks are deeply hollowed, with the high hard curves of his buttocks meeting in a deeply shadowed cleft.

He's 22 years old at TTOBB.

Henn's reaction to seeing Garret naked: “That is a fucking great body”

Garrett is a seriously fantastic cook.

Scorpio, first house Virgo, Mars in Aries with a tight opposition to Venus in Libra so you might want to duck.

Garrett is from Manchester – identifies as pansexual ‘because I’m half Armenian’. Garrett, what does that even fucking mean??? he’ll basically take whatever sex is going.

His father was a Royal Marine, and so was his grandfather, though garrett’s the first of his line to be a Commando, and his forefathers are quietly proud of him for that.

He has had sex with Henn a couple of times.

Garret was honorably discharged early 2012 after 40 commando’s next combat tour.

 

About his character:

Garrett drives everyone mad by collecting completely untrue stories about the taliban putting suicide bombs on the goats, or injecting cyanide into the mre’s, or putting hand grenades into melons. Mac’s reduced to just hitting him on the back of the helmet to shut him up when they’re on foot patrol and Garrett’s telling a long involved story about an ied packed in a tub of razor blades. No one will sit next to him in a blackhawk because he knows every detail of why blackhawks are eleven times more likely to fall out of the fucking sky than other choppers.

“McMath,” John says over the radio link.

“We’re okay,” Mac says into the microphone inside his helmet, “but we’re good and fucking stuck - they’ve got guns on the roof and at the end of the alley.”

“We’re on the way,” John says.

Mac taps his radio off and looks at Garrett, crouching against the foot of the wall next to him. Garrett’s flicking the tips of his gloved fingers together idly, his dark, sharp-featured face completely composed.

“You okay?” Mac asks.

Garrett glances at him, his deep green eyes flickering in genuine confusion.

“Yeah, of course I’m - why would I be not okay?” he asks. “We’re fine - we’ve got cover, and the cavalry’s coming.”

“Oh bollocks,” Barr groans. “We’re in enough shit that Gar’s gone frosty. I hate that.”

 


	6. Thomas Henn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henn is a force of nature.

  


 

Described in _7 Out of 7 Royal Marines_ Agree as:  
... almost exactly a head shorter than Sherlock and although he’s only a year older than Cullen his musculature has a denser, more tested texture to it. There’s more edge to his looks too, his sweetly youthful features undercut by the contrast of his straw blond hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes - as well as his pale blue of his eyes – with his tanned golden skin.

He's 22 years old at the time of TTOBB. He's plenty grown-up by regular Army standards, and even though Commandos tend to run a little older, he’s still not unusually young at all - though he looks it. Also, Henn’s a two tour veteran, so he’s actually kind of an elder statesman compared to many.

Henn's greatgrandfather was one of the original Commandos, raised by Churchill to wreak havoc in occupied Europe. There wasn’t another serviceman or woman in Henn’s family until Henn enlisted, and his nice normal middle class family couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d announced he wanted to be a chorus girl. They still don’t have the slightest idea what to make of him, and his mother firmly believes that the whole thing is an awful phase he’ll grow out of, just like his gayness. His sisters think the whole thing’s a scream. His dad is very, very quietly proud of him.

Henn went to Eton. There's a thick sprinkling of young toffs gone to the bad in the British Army, and no man needs to be ashamed of being a Commando, even if he's not an officer.  
Henn does that truly hilarious thing where he keeps the accent mater and pater gave him, but uses expressions ripped from the likes of Blackwood , ie, "Owe Shite", "Owe My Orse", etc.

Henn — Leo, first house Leo, Mars and Venus in very tight conjunction in Leo.

 

As he was dismissed from his beret ceremony, Henn went into the gents and jerked off as soon. He’d never been so aroused in his life.

When 40 commando cycles back out of combat, and Henn gets promoted to Corporal and McMath gets Sergeant. After their leave -- which they spend traveling together -- they set up housekeeping in a teeny flat in Taunton with an enormous tabby tom cat called Big Bastard.

Henn stays forever: as a commissioned officer when Burrows and John between them persuade him to take the candidacy exams and accept a lieutenancy.

Mycroft's code name for Henn - Bantam  
In the indelible timeline, there’s a gaggle of female intelligence analysts standing around Hinde’s dossier going “Oh he’s dishy - which one is he, again? Errant? Oh he’s gorgeous.” “I like bantam, I hink he’s sweet.” “He’s gay, look at his known associations list - all seven single-spaced double-columned pages of it”.

Henn’s first kiss was a girl. He was thirteen, she was fifteen (she was in school with one of his sisters). He liked how her lips felt, and he was rather scandalized but intrigued by the way she put the tip of her tongue in his mouth, but he didn’t feel like there was much point to the whole thing. He recreated the experience later by mouthing a piece of raw cod; he felt it was a quite accurate reconstruction of the sensation.

He made a brief reconnaissance of kissing during his mid-teens, but then set the whole subject of sex aside as a distraction from more important concerns. He lost his virginity on the second last night of Commando selection-week. He made a flying pass at one of the trainers, who responded, not unkindly, ‘I want you to know, I only fuck Commandos’. Henn sort of crumpled for a split second and then lifted his chin high and said ‘well, I’m going to be a Commando, you’ll see.’ to which the trainer responded, ‘I already see it. Come on, I’m not waiting for them to put a green beret on you just so I can take it off again.’

Henn just sort of harasses everyone, and the vast majority of guys give in at least once. Barr’s as subject to sexual frustration as anyone, and he’s not in principle opposed to the idea of sex with another guy if that’s the only sex that’s available. He figured, if he was going to try it, Henn would presumably be fucking incredible at it. He and Henn ended up on the couch in the common area one evening. They spent a long time necking, and then adjourned to the Alpha fire-team tent and necked some more and then there was a reciprocal hand-job, though if Barr was 100% honest, he’d say he found the feel of another guy’s cock in his hand kind of unsettling. And that was that. Barr feels it was a worthwhile experiment, it just didn’t pan out.  
McMath was kind of chuffed about it - both that ‘his’ Henn was so irresistible that even an actually straight guy like Barr was tempted, and it hadn’t panned out so he wouldn’t have to see Henn sniffing around Barr as well as Blackwood (McMath and Blackwood were the only ones Henn was having sex with on multiple times).

Garrett has had sex with Henn a couple of times, and Cullen got a hand job for his birthday

 _Henn/Blackwood and Henn/McMath_  
Henn gets to Sangin, finds his tent, drops his bag, gets one look at Blackwood and is like ‘Hoooo yeah, I’ll have one of those.’ Blackwood managed to fend him off for about three days and then Henn just swarmed all over him, turned up in the common area in nothing but his tags pretending he’d lost his laptop and then sat down opposite Blackwood and started asking him all about his previous tours and then … and then Blackwood’s not entirely sure how Henn ended up in his lap let alone how he ended up telling Henn that Henn could fuck him and then they retired to Blackwood’s tent and the next day John was just like “WHAT. THE FUCK”.

The first time Henn and McMath had sex was about four weeks after Henn joined Bravo Baker section. McMath was, of course, always ready to look out for a newcomer, but he was constantly amazed and delighted by how much Henn didn’t need looking out for. Henn was tough enough, smart enough, and conscientious enough that within a month no one thought of him as the new guy at all. Anyway. Henn was sleeping his way through 40 Commando in no particular order, and he’d had sex with Blackwood three or four times by the end of his first month. McMath got bumped to the top of the line when Henn walked in on him sleeping naked and uncovered on a cot, with a raging hard-on. Henn just said out loud “you’re fucking kidding me, right? fucking hell” when he saw the majesty that is McMath’s cock. McMath woke up, sort of swore blurrily at Henn, and tried to cover himself. And Henn wouldn’t let him have the sheet, and then he wouldn’t let McMath go back to sleep, and then he wouldn’t let McMath do anything except fuck him.

Whether Blackwood considers himself to be still in combat or not determines whether or not he’s still having sex with Henn, and that is definitely a big factor Henn and McMath’s dynamic.

The general distribution is, if it’s Henn/Blackwood Henn tops, though Blackwood’s super bossy about it. If it’s Henn/McMath it’s generally McMath topping and Henn’s still super bossy no matter what end he’s on. If it’s all three of them, Blackwood takes it from both of Henn and McMath.  
It's not impossible that the first time they did this, Henn suggested it as a way of improving co-operation between the leaders of the Alpha and Bravo fire-teams.  
Snipet (This goes here, trust me)  
“Ah God, Jesus, that’s it, I’m done,” Henn husks. “Everybody the fuck off.”  
McMath rolls aside right away, but Blackwood stretches out along the length of Henn’s body one more time and licks a wet stripe from his chin to his temple.  
“I said stop,” Henn sputters, squirming.  
“Sorry,” Blackwood grins, and pulls back as far as his knees.  
He extends a hand, which Henn grasps, and pulls the other man into a sit. Blackwood is still grinning, and Henn’s momentary annoyance turns to a smile as Blackwood leans in on his hands and knees and brushes a brief kiss onto the tape across the bridge of Henn’s nose.  
“You’re still the prettiest girl in Bravo Baker,” Blackwood says fondly.  
Henn snorts, and socks him a solid punch in the right biceps. Blackwood drops to his shoulder, howling, and rolls onto his back. Henn crawls over him and off the platform, looking around for his clothes while McMath stretches and scratches and squints out through the tent flap at Hinde throwing rocks into the river.

  
The _Baby Boy_ line:  
It doesn’t seem to fit them at all except that it does but it’s doing something completely counter to what that would usually denote and for what superficially looks like a fuck-buddy relationship that went permanent, they actually have a really complicated dynamic going on. Henn is just fuck-tough, if it came down to a knife-fight after a fifty mile forced march and no food for four days, Henn would beat McMath because Henn is Commando through to his bones whereas McMath is just good at his job. Yet McMath calls him _Baby boy_ and somehow it’s about how helpless McMath is because he loves Henn so much.  
Under no circumstances does McMath call Henn _“baby boy”_ except when it’s just the two of them. He can’t do it when Blackwood’s there. Henn would kill him. And if anyone except McMath said something like that, Henn would flip out. He’s keenly aware that he _*looks*_ like the baby of the outfit and always will, so he’s sensitive about it. The fact that McMath is only two years older has some bearing on the fact that Henn accepts it from him - and that Henn is a rather more dominant personality than McMath. It’s an expression of something quite subtle and very private between them - it’s a million miles away from any ‘baby boy/daddy’ dynamic, it’s not about McMath being dominant at all, it’s more like McMath humbling himself by making this not about how tough and vital Henn is. It’s basically the opposite of what’s happening in _Bootnecks_ where John and Blackwood are very much operating from the strength of their personas. McMath using ‘baby boy’ is a gesture towards how his relationship with Henn isn’t about the personas (Henn/Blackwood is), it’s something that’s quite vulnerable and potentially painful (for McMath, at least, and until things get sorted out.)  
* _McMath*_ submits to Henn - because regardless of who’s topping there, there’s no doubt that it’s Henn who’s calling the shots, so if Henn’s a ‘baby boy’ and McMath’s letting him decide when and where and how, then it’s actually a way of McMath marking his helplessness in this relationship.

In the Indelible Universe, Hinde gets married pretty soon after the Commando goes home. At the wedding, McMath is resolutely ignoring Henn and courting all of rami’s sisters at the same time. Barr is about to leave the Marines, and McMath has sworn to him that he really is done with the whole henn thing, and Barr’s fantastically drunk (he’s a bit of lightweight anyway) and he’s just met this amazing girl and Hinde and Rami are just on fire they’re so in love and Sherlock and John are there and then Henn starts poking Barr with a stick because McMath’s ignoring him and Barr _just. loses. his. shit._ and tells Henn how stupid he is not to see what’s painfully obvious to everyone else. And Henn starts moving towards McMath and Barr’s all ‘don’t - don’t fuck him over again when he’s trying to forget you’ and Henn shows just how neat and swift a Commando can be putting someone else down and he goes across the floor and detaches McMath from Rami’s sister and kisses him and Barr’s like _‘kill me now’_ but you know, it all works out just fine. Henn’s already decided he’s getting a bit fucking old for all this messing about, and once he’s presented with the challenge of marriage and not breaking McMath’s heart, he’s inspired to do his best.

Henn’s family is somewhat more middle middle class; he’s got three sisters, all older than him. In terms of organization for the wedding, Mac and Henn made a lot of the decisions themselves — basically, they treated it like any mission. It was actually very neat and proper, it wasn’t just them signing the papers and all off to the pub, and that very much came from them not their families. Henn’s parents footed the bill for the reception, though they made a face about it. His mother was all “it’s not that we mind the money, Thomas, it’s just - well, it’s the *bride’s* family who pay for those things.” To which Henn rather brilliantly said “I am the bride, mum.” “I don’t understand, darling, how could you be?” “Trust me, mum, you do not want to hear me to explain it. Just accept my word for it, you and dad definitely owe Mac’s parents a wedding reception.”

They had a joint stag night, which Blackwood arranged because there is nothing about stag nights he doesn’t know.

This happened:  
“What the hell happened to you?” John demands when Sherlock reels back to the table twenty minutes later with his shirt torn open to his breastbone and a necktie hanging out of the open fly of his suit pants.  
“I - I don’t even - ” Sherlock says, his hands spreading helplessly.  
“Wait. Is that a Coldstream Guards tie?” John says in utter confusion.  
“Oh,” Sherlock says in relief. “Well that explains - no, that explains nothing.”

  _… to celebrate the union of_  
Thomas Edwin Henn  
The Royal Marines  
and  
William Francis McMath  
The Royal Marines  


  
Barr was McMath’s best man, and Hinde was Henn’s. The whole thing was quite a news event – the gay wedding of two serving Royal Marine Commandos, both of whom had been recently mentioned in dispatches for their part in a mission that resulted in their section co being awarded the conspicuous Gallantry Cross – and the papers went so far as to note that he had gotten married to another man, too. George Burrows was caught completely wrong-footed by a reporter and was quoted as saying that ‘the Royal Marines in general and Three Commando Brigade in particular are proud to recognize the heterosexual officers and soldiers serving alongside the rest of us’. His wife still chaffs him about it.  
Henn finally sullied the tanned, unmarked perfection of his skin for his first wedding anniversary. He and McMath were apart for several weeks while Henn was on a training exercise in Morocco and McMath was stuck in Taunton with his arm in plaster, teaching the incoming sniper squad not to shoot each other. When Henn came home, McMath found the result of a stop at a really good tattooist in Tanjah – a single gracefully drawn and beautifully detailed feather curling on the tanned skin between henn’s shoulder blades.

Henn’s such a devoted wife. He has really thrown himself into the respectability of married life — he’s reduced to clutching his pearls in horror about the antics of some of these kids they’re putting green berets on these days. Most of the incoming commission assume that Corporal Henn is in no way related to that private Henn that they hear those wild fucking stories about.  
They have a cat and live in this teeny flat with chintz drapes because the landlady imagined her married out-of-quarters couple would include some wide-eyed girl adrift in this town of Army men and she wanted to make a nice little retreat for her. And henn’s all “big wide blue eyes, i’m an Army bride - hell, i’m an Army bride twice, once for me and once for Mac.”

What percentage of Henn's dialogue is "fuck"?  
It depends:  
If John's present and Blackwood isn't, then less than 5%.  
If John *and* Blackwood are present, then about 10%.  
If John's not present and Blackwood is, at least 50%.  
If Blackwood and or Henn have their trousers down, at least 80%.  
If McMath's there as well and all three of them have their trousers down, then all of it. Seriously, he once lay there for two hours just going "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck ... (inhale) fuck. Fuck."

Fanart:

  
[Seiji](http://seiji-chan.tumblr.com/post/12667726451/still-spamming-this-one-eventually-i-will-get)  
[More from Seiji](http://4seiji.tumblr.com/post/14243954733/henn-where-did-you-get-a-pudding-pop-in-december)  
[Seiji](http://4seiji.tumblr.com/post/13317963822/heywematch) (yes, again)  
[Thomas Henn - nininghasfeelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/280437)  


  
 _Commando personality quiz_  
You scored: Henn  
You are: A complete riot. You’re energetic, extraverted, and uninhibited. You’re always the center of attention, even though you’re too busy having fun to notice or care if anyone’s watching. You’re friendly, but you can unintentionally trample people who are more sensitive or dismiss people who are more reticent than you. Your constant attention to novelty and amusement means you sometimes miss something really important.  
Henn is – God, what can I even say? Henn is a force of nature. He’s five foot six in boots and looks like he’s twelve, and his second week in the section he basically scaled Blackwood and fucked him until he squealed. There is no plan so daring, so deranged, so plain fucking dumb that Henn isn’t on board with it. There is nothing this kid won’t attempt and it’s amazing what can actually be achieved without fear or the capacity for shame. He is a legend in his own Commando, and there’s hardly a Royal Marine who can’t tell – with illustrative actions – at least one story involving Henn, two or more members of another elite unit, and a confined space. As a soldier, he’s alight with the joy of someone doing what they were born to do. Someday he’ll be the kind of leader men follow into hell, both because he infuses them with his own courage, and because he’s not remotely looking where they’re going. But despite Barr’s misgivings, when presented with McMath’s heart, Henn threw himself into domesticity and monogamy with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. At base, Henn was shocked and touched that someone would feel that seriously and sincerely about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I own nothing.  
> Seriously. NOTHING.


	7. James Cullen

Described in 7 out of 7 royal Marines Agree as:

...a shade shorter than Sherlock but considerably broader in weight of bones and bulk of muscle under smooth young flesh. His brown hair is shorn brutally short, giving some valuable distinction to regular, pleasant features that are otherwise notable only for youth and robust good health.

He's got brown eyes.

Cullen's 21 years old at the time of TTOBB but, unlike Henn, looks much more grown-up.

He's from Bromley. Identifies as straight, but his hormones have him in a death-grip. He’s been in circle jerks, and he’s made out with several other guys, and it’s just a matter of time before he cracks on a tour and gets involved with another guy.

Cullen is the youngest of five children, four boys and one girl. De’s been referred to as _‘the baby’_ and _‘baby Jimmy’_ all his life, even after he ended up the tallest.

In the Indelible verse, he comes home after being reported missing in action presumed killed in action, and receives the recognition of ‘ _mentioned in dispatches_ ’ for an operation that garnered the most decorations received by the commando brigade for a single action since the d-day landings. And he has to sign the official secrets act, and no one knows what the hell actually happened over there, all his citation says is that it’s for ‘notable courage and gallantry, shown during an action at Kandahar in defense of a wounded officer’.

And, suddenly, if cullen expresses an opinion at home about something, instead of getting loads of ‘ _shouldn’t you be wearing a bib, Jimmy?_ ’ he gets ‘ _do you think? wow, i didn’t know that_ ’.

[Cullen got a hand job for his birthday](../../293741/chapters/469895?show_comments=true#comment_463648) >.< _Jesus, Henn you are impossible._

Cullen — Gemini, first house and Neptune in Cancer

TATTOOS: He has the shoulder flash tattoo same as Barr.

Cullen’s action man collection is probably the finest ever assembled in the British Isles.

He is honorably discharged early 2012 after 40 commando’s next combat tour. He ends up being a demolitions expert.

** Fanart **

  

  * [Seiji](http://4seiji.tumblr.com/post/12630098622/cullen1%20)
  



 

_The bit where the groom’s supporters perform a dance number. oops._

“We’re commandos, we don’t dance,” Cullen says, looking slightly panicked as he glances around the group for confirmation.

“We’re commandos, we do whatever the fuck it takes to get the job done,” McMath says firmly. “If Hinde needs us to dance, we’re going to fucking dance. I want to see you lepping like a fucking herring, Cullen.” (apparently you can take the mcmath family out of the bog, but it won’t help.)

 

 


	8. Sherlock Holmes

_ Sherlock Kingsley Shackleton Holmes _

  
Kingsley, while appropriate (ACD's son's middle name), it's not quite ludicrous enough. Shackleton is appropriately grandiose, but doesn't have any canon connection. The Holmes family has been on an 's' name rampage for the last hundred years at least.

Sherlock knows himself to be both a miracle, and an accident … and he can never be sure which one counts the most.  
HeadCanon: After several years of marriage, Siger Holmes found out he was producing essentially no viable sperm, and would in all probability never father a child. He and his wife turned to his dearest, closest friend for help, and that man was Mycroft’s biological father. Mycroft was conceived in love and an unabashed determination towards joy. When he was still small, his parents - biological and social - discussed the possibility of a sibling for him, but in the end Siger and his wife decided against it. But, as it only (theoretically) takes one sperm to get you pregnant, six years after mycroft was born, his mother found herself unexpectedly pregnant by her husband.  
This, then, is the key to the mystery of Sherlock: that he knows himself to be both a miracle, and an accident … and he can never be sure which one counts the most.

Sherlock is from Kensington.

This version of Sherlock is gay as a gay thing, he has never so much as looked at a woman with any approaching interest, and he was a complete boy-slut when he was younger, so no crisis or anything for him.

In TTOBB Sherlock is Out of His Head what with the falling in love and being in firefights and having his hair cut off, because under other circumstances he wouldn't condescend to notice the existence of knuckleheads like Blackwood and Henn (Hinde is probably beautiful enough to earn three seconds forbearance from Sherlock).

For aesthetic reasons, Sherlock does not wear a helmet in TTOBB, "because of the hair. Screw accuracy mind the hair". (AQ's AUs are movies, not documentaries)

What makes Sherlock a master of disguise is not the costume, but the ability to *sell* the costume.

Sherlock does not model his soldier persona on John much - the physicality is so different. Sherlock ripped Hinde's physical presentation - ie, how does tall and slender interact with the commando physical vocabulary, and stole some of Henn's expressions that convey the faintly pained public school boy surrounded by clods, albeit clods he'd die for and who'd die for him. Sherlock's probably shaving a fraction off his vowels, too - not enough for anyone to notice the difference, just enough to make them walk a little less stiffly around him.

 ** _(Spoiler on TTOBB alert)_**  
A large part (almost all?) of Sherlock's shock at Hinde's death is less to do with Hinde per se, and more with the realization of just how easy it is for someone to die in that situation. Sherlock kind of bought into the laconic, dry bravado of the British soldiers, and half believed that John and his section couldn't really be seriously hurt. But now he understands that John could die *just like that* at any moment, and it's scaring him. When john's shot, Sherlock manages pretty well (initially at least) because john doesn't just die in an instant, he's there cursing and bleeding and kicking, and Sherlock is so relieved he doesn't worry about what happens next.

_ His relationship with Mycroft _

In this universe Mycroft really would get his 'happy announcement by the end of the week' if not for the shit-explosion of plot.

If only Mycroft weren't so worried about Sherlock and absorbed about the whole conspiracy thing, he'd be having a ball with this. Sherlock was beyond obnoxious when Mycroft fell in love, lots of "oh, how pedestrian" and "really Mycroft, I didn't realize you were so very ordinary" and Mycroft promised himself that in the unlikely event of Sherlock falling for someone, Mycroft was gonna give him hell. But he's too distracted to enjoy it now.

Sherlock likes Thomas (Hawksby, Mycroft's husband); he considers him to be quite intelligent and to have excellent taste except in men. Also, it amused Sherlock no end to see Mycroft reduced to something as mundane as marriage and fatherhood; Mycroft has high hopes of revenge in the form of John Watson.

  
_Sherlock and John in different Universes:_

Warzone is a more canon-compliant version - John who is somewhat at a disadvantage (at one point he says that it’s Sherlock who’s making the rules) and a Sherlock who doesn’t have any insight into his own feelings. Whereas TTOBB was very much shaped by my desire to see what would happen if John was operating from a position of strength when he met Sherlock. The answer, apparently, was a Sherlock who was completely swept away and knew it, and a John who was willing to just grab what he wanted and hang on.

John’s greater ease and openness is just his being pre-trauma, but Sherlock’s greater emotional availability is honestly verging on OOC - you can justify some of his sociability as being in a milieu where he’s actually appreciated, but the fact that he basically falls flat in love with John in twelve hours is possibly a bit of a stretch. (AQ is "one of the people who think that at the end of ASiP they probably went for chinese and then shagged each other blind, so maybe not"). And the whole point of AU’s is push the characters to the limits of their nature by changing their situation. It’ll certainly be interesting to switch to Overclocked, where they’re both operating at their least functional, versus TTOBB where they’re both on their game so completely.

The plan was not for John and Sherlock in TTOBB to be so instantly in love, but 2500 words into the thing they’re just eye-fucking each other so hard across that table the other guys in the mess think it’s an earthquake. The plan was to tone down that scene and the scene in the next chapter with the armor (Sherlock’s “i could kneel”) but it just kept coming out the same so AQ gave up and wrote the blowjob for the end of that chapter.

Straight or gay, AQ's Sherlock is always a misogynistic little shit.

  
_ About Sherlock falling in love with John. _

They met at about eight in the morning, went to Khush-i-nakhud around noon, hit Kandahar late afternoon/early evening. They can read each other/trust each other completely, but there's a shit-storm of stuff they don't know about each other and how well/badly this relationship is going to work.  
In fairness Sherlock is acutely aware of how precarious the situation is, as well. He makes the 'we can wait' offer more as a way of offering John an out, rather than actually thinking that's a viable alternative -- like, 'if you really can't bear to do this under these circumstances, we can pretend it's going to happen later'. 'Force of nature' about covers it.

By Chapter 2 in TTOBB, Sherlock is still feeling a little wide-eyed and out of his element. Unfortunately, the longer he's there and the more attached he gets to John, the more impossible he's going to get.

In the first 24 hours of their relationship they had three orgasms each, going 24 hours without sex is basically gonna kill them. Expect the bed to go up in flames when they finally get there.

John and Sherlock are in anything but lust when Sherlock gives John a blow job after the firefight at Khush-i-nakhud, but by the time they have sex that evening, they’re both thinking about being together forever.

When having sex with John in TTOBB, Sherlock (as in the earlier chapters) tends to restrict himself to a few non-incriminating 'oh gods' and 'that's good'. The increasing frequency of 'christ', 'fuck', and more florid descriptors are attributed to John's being a) a bit foul-mouthed in bed, and b) a ridiculously good shag.

John was quiet and Sherlock was taciturn, and over the course of the whole thing they both change their style.  
They've just fallen in love, in the worst kind of way. It doesn't make any difference when or where they meet, there's always going to be that instant lightning strike of attraction that's so strong it just overwhelms everything else and is indistinguishable from love, trust, commitment, the whole shebang. It's not *that* different from john committing manslaughter with an illegal weapon after spending a total of like four hours in Sherlock's company.  
Later, of course, there's the potential for the whole thing to fall apart if the attraction isn't sustained with something else, but canon has already covered that, we know these guys are deeply deeply connected for the rest of their lives (insert aside about significance of companionate-marriage in 1880 versus 2010). Judging by what we see in bbc canon, the more shit that's flying, the more john and sherlock pull together.

Sherlock, being a free agent, is just completely throwing himself into this. But John's keenly aware that he is not wholly his own man, that the army can send him anywhere at anytime. There's also probably a hint of uncertainty about the rightness of being involved with the man who's under his protection, though of course Sherlock would just *snort* at the idea that John's abusing his trust.Anyhow, the big moment for John doesn't come until later, when he's forced to choose between his two loyalties, to Sherlock, or to the army.

They have sex to communicate all the stuff they don’t say.

There's no universe in which John doesn't just tear little bits of himself off to facilitate whatever the crap it is Sherlock is doing. And you know he wouldn't do that for anyone else anywhere, ever.

In every possible scenario with John, Sherlock likes to get his 'possible deal-breakers' out there as fast as possible. He doesn't want to fall too fast and too hard for some guy that's just not going to accept the basic requirements of life with him.

Each of them understands the other is the person to whom they will forever compare all others, but, within 24 hours of meeting, they've also reached the point where each of them would crawl through fire and glass to get to the other. There's simply no way for them to be separated except by death. As long as they're both alive, their whole minds are bent towards finding each other again.  
They’re clearly envisioning an ‘after’ together - it’s right there in the text. That first night at Bastion, John says how the timing is bad — you don’t say that about a one night stand. They talk about John’s leave, and where they’ll live. I think right from day one they’re both sure that ‘this is the one’, and they’re both assuming that they’ll be together in whatever way is compatible with their respective jobs. As things get increasingly desperate in TTOBB, it becomes more about the ‘now’ and less about how they want to spend the rest of their lives together — it pretty much gets to the point where ‘the rest of their lives’ is counted in hours anyway.

The marriage proposal consists of Sherlock dropping a pair of wedding rings on John’s chest, and John picking his up and putting it on and that’s that. They never say to each other “I loved you completely and utterly from the first moment we touched”, because to them it’s like saying “your name is John Watson”. Too obvious to need stating.

They end up taking the Baker Street flat because of the coincidence of the address matching John's call sign. Sherlock says it's destiny.

Years later you'd hear John's voice floating out an open window in Baker Street:  
"I'm telling you, Sherlock, grab a hold of something because this fuck is going to be epic."

 

**Snipets**

_From Indelible Universe_

They had a joint stag night, which Blackwood arranged because there is nothing about stag nights he doesn’t know.  
“What the hell happened to you?” John demands when Sherlock reels back to the table twenty minutes later with his shirt torn open to his breastbone and a necktie hanging out of the open fly of his suit pants.  
“I - I don’t even - ” Sherlock says, his hands spreading helplessly.  
“Wait. Is that a Coldstream Guards tie?” John says in utter confusion.  
“Oh,” Sherlock says in relief. “Well that explains - no, that explains nothing.”

The first time John saw all of his section together again after Afghanistan was at Hinde’s wedding. John had been invalided out about six months earlier, so he was in civilian clothes, but the others were all still in, and just a couple of months back from the end of their combat tour. When John and Sherlock came into the room where the wedding ceremony was being held, Hinde hadn’t been brought in yet, but the others - all resplendent in Royal Marine dress uniform - stood up and saluted John. Of course John got self-conscious, but Sherlock let go of his arm and stepped back, to make sure all the people looking were in no doubt as to whom the gesture was meant for.

Sherlock keeps exactly one photograph in his box of important things. It was taken by Rami at her own wedding reception, and it’s of John and Sherlock sitting at a devastated dinner table towards the end of the evening. Sherlock is in profile to the camera, his half-regrown curls disheveled and his tie hanging loose on either side of his open shirt collar. He’s gazing rather abstractedly at something out of shot – he can’t remember what, some piece of horseplay by the grooms’ men probably, but there’s the faintest suggestion of a smile on his lips. John’s chair is to one side of and slightly behind Sherlock’s; John has his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, and Sherlock’s long fingers are lying over John’s shorter ones. But it’s the look on John’s face that makes this picture one of Sherlock’s treasures. John isn’t looking at whatever’s going on out of the picture; John is staring at Sherlock, at the half-averted curve of Sherlock’s cheek and the irrepressible bit of hair curling behind Sherlock’s ear. John’s face is utterly solemn, and absorbed, and completely, completely at peace.

 

_This is from another universe, not TTOBB or Indelible._

(Pati's note: I like thinking this happens after the first chapter of "[ _Area of Expertise_](../../../203843)" and triggers what we all know happens next)

Once, Sherlock came up the stairs to John’s room to discover that John had fitted a chin-up bar across the doorway and was using it right then. Sherlock can remember with perfect clarity how John’s sneakered feet, crossed at the ankles and knees bent, were almost touching the taut curves of his buttocks – clearly delineated through the worn softness of his sweatpants. The snug fit of John’s tee shirt did nothing to obscure the strong, outward sweep from his waist to his armpits, or the thick rolls of muscle between his shoulder blades. But it was the hard, cabled twists of John’s arms, the white-knuckled grip of his hands on the bar, and the exposed nape of his neck as he bent his head that seemed to sear themselves onto sherlock’s vision. Those, and the smooth, controlled lowering of John’s body with the accompanying hiss of inhalation, followed by the swift determined lift and the sharp grunting exhalation.

 

  
_Fanart:_

  

  * [Reapersun](http://reapersun.tumblr.com/post/9953190394/spun-off-the-last-request-i-wanted-to-draw-modern)
  

  * [Marielikestodraw](../../225486)
  

  * [Abundantlyqueer](../../235426)
  




	9. John H. Watson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We love him,” Hinde says daringly.  
> “Yeah.”  
> “Fuck, yeah.”  
> (from "Putting the Brave in Bravo Baker")  
>  _Don't we all?_ I think....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this one ready even before I had Sherlock's. Then Series two happened and some details changed and then... then I just assumed I had posted it. Sorry I kept all this BAMFness for myself for so long.  
> Expect a lot of facts here to be the same as the previous chapter. Remember none of these are my words, but the author's.

TTOBB!John identifies as bi. Has had three ‘tour boyfriends’ and several pretty casual things with guys at home; his serious relationships at home have always been with women. He considers himself 90% straight but pragmatic - the only sex he can realistically get on active service is guy-sex, and that's okay. He's a little surprised that The Love of His Life turned out to be a guy, but ... it's fine.

John and Blackwood had a thing that lasted almost a year, until John applied for a commission - the imminent difference in rank was a deal breaker for them both. His previous tour boyfriends (there were two) were similar to the situation with Blackwood - men who were the same rank as John but not in his immediate section, close to his age, and looking for something low-key and discreet. John hadn’t been involved with anyone since he became an officer - he and George Leonard might have gotten something going if Sherlock hadn’t exploded into John’s world.

John’s first time with a guy: 

It definitely wasn’t very “Omg it is my first time”, John’s a doctor and an internet porn user, there wasn’t anything remotely surprising in the situation for him. It was not while he was in northern ireland, that was too like ‘real life’, he was perfectly able to pick up women. Maybe Kosovo, maybe not until Iraq. It wasn’t with Blackwood, that'd give too much weight to the relationship with Blackwood. So, Kosovo, with another corporal (this was before John was in the Royal Marines, he was in the Dragoons) who was probably (like John) older than the average grunt and looking for a discreet, no-strings thing to tide him over during his combat tour. I don’t think John ever had any kind of crisis over this, it was a fairly easy pragmatic decision. So, he had a (short) string of those relationships (three guys? four?) ending with Blackwood, and then no other guys until Sherlock.

**_John's career:_ **

John Watson joined the army at 26 and passed commando selection a little less than a year later. He was invalided out 2009. Goes from Private to Corporal in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards, then Corporal in the Commandos, then instead of going up the enlisted ranks to Sergeant) he applied for and received an officer’s commission) Lieutenant, and then Captain which is where he is when TTOBB starts. He doesn’t have enough seniority for a retiring promotion to Major, but in view of his exceptional actions and his CGC award, Mycroft and the Ministry of Defense agreed to waive the seniority requirement, so he ends TTOBB as Major Watson.

** John's tatoo:  **

50-75% of British career military have some kind of service emblem tattoo, with the percentages higher among enlisted and lower among officers. Factor in that John began as an enlisted soldier in an elite unit, and there is basically no chance in hell that he doesn't have at least one tattoo. Best guess is: the Royal Marines emblem (globe with a wreath and anchor) on the top of his left arm; and an amalgamation of the basic commando flash and the emblem of his specific commando on the top of his right arm (so, that's the word "Commando" written in an convex curve, and below that is a dagger pointing upwards, with a "4" on the left and a "0" on the right of the blade). The tattoo is always a slightly blurry job, done cheaply on a leave in Germany. After he gets shot, he has some text added (he doesn't have the motto done originally, just the graphic), and that's done much more elegantly, at a nice place in London.

** John and his section:  **

At the end of Ch11 (TTOBB), John thinks Hinde and Henn are too young to see someone they know well die. But Blackwood's older and has already seen some extreme shit, so John would trust him to be able to handle it. Having rejected Hinde and Henn as too young to see him die, the answer (if Sherlock had pressed) would have been McMath and Barr from the Bravo fire-team of John's section.

Spoilers on TTOBB -chapters 17-18: (about McMath, Blackwood and Henn joining John in leaving the base) It was a hard decision for John in the sense that he and his guys are now technically deserters. But he completely understood that if they stayed in Sangin — or anywhere the chain of command could find them — they could just be picked off as suited the conspiracy. The only way to find the rest of the conspirators is for Sherlock to come back, and the only people Sherlock can trust to help him are John’s section, and they all need to get out from under the conspiracy’s surveillance, so the decision to run was really the only viable option. John really did not have to persuade Blackwood, McMath, and Henn much. They know what’s going on, and they know this is their own best chance of survival and the only chance of closing down the conspiracy. And of course, they trust John and his judgment so much that it would be hard for them to let him go alone.

_Extract from[Putting the Brave in Bravo Baker](../../219994) _

To the entire section - what sort of leader is John? What do you think of him?

There’s a flurry of slight smiles, glances, then serious nods.

“Yeah, he’s good,” Blackwood says, on everyone’s behalf.

There’s another round of nodding. “We should probably say a bit more,” McMath says.

“Okay,” Blackwood says gravely. “He expects everyone to do their job, and do it really fucking well. If you do, he doesn’t give you shit about anything else.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty laid back as long as you’re doing your bit,” McMath says.

“And he’s a doctor – he used to be a doctor, I mean,” Barr grins. “What’s handier than that? Other sections get a medic, we get a surgeon.”

“And you know he’s going to be right there in a fire-fight with you,” Garrett says. “Not trying to lead from the back, like some useless fuckers.”

“You’re making him sound really boring,” Henn protests, “and he’s not, at all.”

“No, he’s a complete fucking maniac,” Hinde says. “I mean, even for a commando.”

There’s a general chorus of grins and agreement.

“Okay, everybody, the moment I realized Doc Watson is a fucking maniac,” Blackwood prompts.

“The thing with the bomb,” McMath and Barr say to each other simultaneously, and both of them start laughing.

“So, we had air support for some fucking thing, and Doc called the strike in for like half a mile to the east of us,” McMath says, “and when the bomb dropped it hit the fucking roof of the building right next to us, and the four walls blew out and there’s bricks and shit raining down on us. And the rest of us are all Jesus fucking Christ they practically bombed us -”

He’s laughing too hard to keep talking, so Barr takes over.

“ – and Doc’s on the radio, just, like, okay, now try bombing our position on the off chance you hit the fucking Taliban by accident instead.”

Barr collapses sideways against McMath as they both go into fresh fits of laughter.

“The Yanks’ Humvee,” Garrett says, to renewed hilarity.

“Aw Jesus that was priceless,” Blackwood laughs.

“Us and a fire-team of Yanks got pinned in an alleyway; their Humvee was parked at the street end, and the Taliban were climbing aboard to use the machine gun on it,” Garret grins, “so Doc hauls off with an RPG and blows the bloody thing up. And the Yanks are all that’s our fucking Humvee. And Doc’s like, bill me, you fuckers, I just saved your lives.”

Henn’s leaning on Blackwood’s shoulder sobbing with laughter.

“No,” Blackwood says, “what he said was, you can bill us for the Humvee, but we’ll give you guys the RPG for free.”

“Crossing the road at Al Kushad,” Hinde says. The laughter turns to softer warmer smiles.

“That was fucking classy,” Henn says. “That’s my one, too.”

“There was a pitched firefight that went on all night,” Hinde says. “We were on one side of the Al Kushad road, and there was a couple of sections of TA on the other side, who’d only been here like a week. And the Taliban were just raining shit down on us, tracer rounds, flares, fragmentation grenades – like, nobody was actually getting hit, but there was so much stuff flying that it looked a lot worse than it was – anyway, the TA guys were just getting completely rattled, they weren’t ready for that at all. Doc said he’d go over and steady them up a bit. So he just stands straight up and goes walking across the road like nothing’s happening, just, lala, a commando doesn’t duck and run for petty crap like this. It was brilliant, and the TA guys were like, whoa, okay, if he doesn’t think it’s a big deal, maybe it isn’t a big deal.”

“Cullen, what’s yours?” Blackwood says.

“The bit where he fires a missile at the guy we’re supposed to be body-guarding,” Cullen says.

“You’ve been here four fucking months and that’s the first thing you’ve seen?” Blackwood says. “That’s fucking tragic.”

“What’s yours?” McMath asks Blackwood.

“SUV at the roadblock in Musa Qala,” Blackwood says.

“Fuck, yeah,” McMath says. “That took nerve.”

“There’s a regular barrier on the road,” Blackwood explains, “and then there’s about two hundred feet of road with walls on either side, and there’s a blast barrier at the end of that. This SUV just ran through the regular barrier, and Doc and me and another guy were inside the blast barrier, and Doc yells at us to get out and he just starts shooting straight at the SUV, doesn’t run, doesn’t even back up, just kept pumping away at that thing while we fucking dived over the barrier.”

“Jesus, what happened?” Cullen asks wide-eyed. “He shot the driver in the head, and then shot out one front tire and the SUV went into the wall,” Blackwood says. “Stone cold, it was beautiful.”

“Was he okay?”

“Oh yeah, he turns round and walks out from the barrier and goes I think I’ve got grit in my eye. He’s fucking insane.”

“We love him,” Hinde says daringly.

“Yeah.”

“Fuck, yeah.”

 

_** John and Sherlock: ** _

 

They met at about eight in the morning, went to Khush-i-nakhud around noon, hit Kandahar late afternoon/early evening. They can read each other/trust each other completely, but there's a shit-storm of stuff they don't know about each other and how well/badly this relationship is going to work. In fairness Sherlock is acutely aware of how precarious the situation is, as well. He makes the 'we can wait' offer more as a way of offering John an out, rather than actually thinking that's a viable alternative -- like, 'if you really can't bear to do this under these circumstances, we can pretend it's going to happen later'. 'Force of nature' about covers it.

In Ch6 John feels like he's said his piece - ie, punch in the face, and I'll kill you if you do that again - and Sherlock has accepted the terms (or, at least, not argued for his continued right to suit himself), and John's well used to 'reprimand and move on' as an officer. And he's not going to waste a second just being angry for its own sake.

In the first 24 hours of their relationship they had three orgasms each, going 24 hours without sex is basically gonna kill them. Expect the bed to go up in flames when they finally get there.

John and Sherlock are in anything but lust when Sherlock gives John a blow job after the firefight at Khush-i-nakhud, but by the time they have sex that evening, they’re both thinking about being together forever.

They've just fallen in love, in the worst kind of way. It doesn't make any difference when or where they meet, there's always going to be that instant lightning strike of attraction that's so strong it just overwhelms everything else and is indistinguishable from love, trust, commitment, the whole shebang. It's not *that* different from john committing manslaughter with an illegal weapon after spending a total of like four hours in Sherlock's company. Later, of course, there's the potential for the whole thing to fall apart if the attraction isn't sustained with something else, but canon has already covered that, we know these guys are deeply deeply connected for the rest of their lives (insert aside about significance of companionate-marriage in 1880 versus 2010). Judging by what we see in BBC canon, the more shit that's flying, the more John and Sherlock pull together.

Sherlock, being a free agent, is just completely throwing himself into this. But John's keenly aware that he is not wholly his own man, that the army can send him anywhere at anytime. There's also probably a hint of uncertainty about the rightness of being involved with the man who's under his protection, though of course Sherlock would just *snort* at the idea that John's abusing his trust.Anyhow, the big moment for John doesn't come until later, when he's forced to choose between his two loyalties, to Sherlock, or to the army.

They have sex to communicate all the stuff they don’t say.

There's no universe in which John doesn't just tear little bits of himself off to facilitate whatever the crap it is Sherlock is doing. And you know he wouldn't do that for anyone else anywhere, ever.

In every possible scenario with John, Sherlock likes to get his 'possible deal-breakers' out there as fast as possible. He doesn't want to fall too fast and too hard for some guy that's just not going to accept the basic requirements of life with him.

Each of them understands the other is the person to whom they will forever compare all others, but, within 24 hours of meeting, they've also reached the point where each of them would crawl through fire and glass to get to the other. There's simply no way for them to be separated except by death. As long as they're both alive, their whole minds are bent towards finding each other again.

They’re clearly envisioning an ‘after’ together - it’s right there in the text. That first night at Bastion, John says how the timing is bad — you don’t say that about a one night stand. They talk about John’s leave, and where they’ll live. I think right from day one they’re both sure that ‘this is the one’, and they’re both assuming that they’ll be together in whatever way is compatible with their respective jobs. As things get increasingly desperate in TTOBB, it becomes more about the ‘now’ and less about how they want to spend the rest of their lives together — it pretty much gets to the point where ‘the rest of their lives’ is counted in hours anyway.

The marriage proposal consists of Sherlock dropping a pair of wedding rings on John’s chest, and John picking his up and putting it on and that’s that. They never say to each other “I loved you completely and utterly from the first moment we touched”, because to them it’s like saying “your name is John Watson”. Too obvious to need stating. They end up taking the Baker Street flat because of the coincidence of the address matching John's call sign. Sherlock says it's destiny.

Years later you'd hear John's voice floating out an open window in Baker Street: "I'm telling you, Sherlock, grab a hold of something because this fuck is going to be epic."

John is so strong that he doesn’t need to act possessive - he knows he could protect Sherlock from any unwanted attention in the unlikely event that Sherlock couldn’t protect himself, and he accepts Sherlock’s feelings for him to the extent that he knows that someone else’s persistent attention would be unwanted.

 

_ Sherlock and John in different Universes:  _

Warzone is a more canon-compliant version - John who is somewhat at a disadvantage (at one point he says that it’s Sherlock who’s making the rules) and a Sherlock who doesn’t have any insight into his own feelings. Whereas TTOBB was very much shaped by my desire to see what would happen if John was operating from a position of strength when he met Sherlock. The answer, apparently, was a Sherlock who was completely swept away and knew it, and a John who was willing to just grab what he wanted and hang on. John’s greater ease and openness is just his being pre-trauma, but Sherlock’s greater emotional availability is honestly verging on OOC - you can justify some of his sociability as being in a milieu where he’s actually appreciated, but the fact that he basically falls flat in love with John in twelve hours is possibly a bit of a stretch. (AQ is "one of the people who think that at the end of ASiP they probably went for chinese and then shagged each other blind, so maybe not"). And the whole point of AU’s is push the characters to the limits of their nature by changing their situation. It’ll certainly be interesting to switch to Overclocked, where they’re both operating at their least functional, versus TTOBB where they’re both on their game so completely.

The plan was not for John and Sherlock in TTOBB to be so instantly in love, but 2500 words into the thing they’re just eye-fucking each other so hard across that table the other guys in the mess think it’s an earthquake. The plan was to tone down that scene and the scene in the next chapter with the armor (Sherlock’s “I could kneel”) but it just kept coming out the same so AQ gave up and wrote the blowjob for the end of that chapter.

** Snippets:  **

John Watson is sex on legs.

John Watson is sex on legs, literally, because right now John’s legs - John’s sturdy, thickly muscled, solidly braced legs - are supporting his own weight, and Sherlock’s weight, and withstanding the sharp jolt and shift of all that weight every time John tips his pelvis down enough to drag a few inches of his cock out of Sherlock’s arse, and then snaps his hips forwards to drive it in again hard, and Sherlock cries out and his spine whip-cracks and his back slams against the wall behind them. And when Sherlock feels John’s thighs begin to shake, a wild tremor that runs counterpoint under the big, bold thrusts of John’s hips, he knows it’s not because John’s tiring, it’s not because John’s weak, it’s because John’s -

“ … coming,” John groans, as Sherlock feels the shaking in John’s thighs spread to engulf every muscle in John’s body and then every muscle in his body too. “Oh God, coming … ”

** Art: **

  * [Nininghasfeelings](../../280422)
  * [Marielikestodraw](../../225486), also [this](../../225489), and [this](../../228335)
  * [TheOtherWillow](../../206495/chapters/307347)
  * [Brennkinn](../../235143)



[](../../235143)

[](../../235143)

[](../../235143)

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[](../../235143)

[](../../235143)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is always a Work In Progress.  
> Nothing here belongs to me, I just work here.  
> Do not hesitate to ask questions, point to mistakes and/or typos.

**Author's Note:**

> Absolutely nothing belongs to me.  
> Seriously, every word is copied from author and co-authors' blogs and comments.  
> I just work here.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [you don't even like anything you like](https://archiveofourown.org/works/390145) by [youaremyscience](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youaremyscience/pseuds/youaremyscience)




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